Beast of Burden
by Astaralis
Summary: Sequel to "Break Free." AU now that I'm on my sequel. Rated M for mature content/situations.
1. I'll Never Be Your Beast of Burden

**A/N: If you haven't already, go back and read "Break Free;" otherwise nothing will make any sense. Total AU now that I'm on my sequel. To all of my readers: enjoy! I hope I live up to your expectations. Don't get too mad about what goes on in the beginning here - you know you all love that I bring the drama. And now... on with the show!**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing but these silly ideas in my head. And that's only until I get them uploaded to the internet. Sigh.

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**_Oh, God, Ohmygod,_ she thought as she struggled to keep from hyperventilating.

"Will you marry me?" he asked her, and more than anything in her life, she wanted to say yes. She wanted to scream out her acceptance and become a teenaged bride. But she had bigger dreams than that, and Noah knew about them. He said he supported them. They had worked towards her dreams (and his) side-by-side for the better part of 3 years. Now was not the time to go second-guessing those dreams.

She had known what she wanted to do with her life when she was a toddler. She loved singing and dancing and making her fathers laugh, so she became determined that she was going to be a star. As she began receiving more and more instruction, she realized that her true love was singing, and that expressing herself through music was more gratifying than any other feeling in the world. Until she had found Noah in the glee room that day. Until her life path had been altered.

She loved him. She felt incomplete when she wasn't with him, and when he returned to her it always produced a rush of warmth and happiness in her veins. She could see herself spending the rest of her life with him. But she wasn't ready to get married. She was just getting ready to get out of Lima and live a little – not settle down and get married and have to deal with all of those pressures on top of being a college student and an aspiring Broadway star!

Still, she didn't want to tell him all of that in front of all of these people. When she had dreamt of being on a stage and having everyone's eyes on her, this was not exactly the situation she had envisioned. She didn't want to break his heart – they would need to talk about why she was going to say no, so that it wasn't a no, not ever, but just a no, not right now.

She knew she was pausing for too long as Noah's fingers twitched around the microphone and his eyes crinkled at the side in the first stages of confusion. She couldn't bear to hurt him like that in front of all of these people, so she decided to perform for him, to save his heart.

"Someday, my prince," she said, and she pulled him to his feet. "Someday, I will marry you," she whispered to him, and then she kissed him hard on the mouth. Behind their figures the celebratory fireworks exploded into the sky and she could hear the cheers erupting all around her.

They made their way onto the field hand-in-hand, and were congratulated by practically everyone that either of them had ever known. All the girls were squealing with delight about wedding planning (Rachel's stomach rolled at the thought) and the guys all fist-bumped or clapped Noah on the shoulder with a murmured, "Congrats, dude."

Noah's mother and sister rushed onto the field to hug them, and Rachel felt a pang of guilt when she pulled away from each embrace. She had come to love them so much in her years with Noah – they had become a second family to her. When she told him that she wasn't ready, she hoped his family wouldn't think that she was rejecting them.

Her fathers reached the field and raced towards her. For all intents and purposes, they both appeared to be excited about the prospect of having their teenaged daughter get married right out of high school, but Rachel knew that they were just as startled and scared as she was. They were almost as invested in her dreams as she was.

"We know something's wrong," Daddy whispered to her as he pulled her into a hug,

"You're not ready for this, are you?" Dad questioned her as he took his turn to embrace her.

"No," she whispered back ashamedly. Turning from them, she slipped her hand into Noah's and her fathers walked up to congratulate him as well.

"Are you two going to one of the after-parties?" Noah's mother asked them.

"Yeah, Mom, I told you that already. And then I'm staying the night at Rachel's tonight, okay, so don't wait up," Noah responded as she realized that she had completely forgotten about agreeing to go to the after-party. That was pre-proposal. Post-proposal, she felt as if she were about to vomit.

"Well, if you decide to drink anything, just let us know and we'll come get you," Daddy said. "We're so proud of the both of you, and we would hate for you to have your futures compromised because of drunk driving. We would hate to lose you…" he trailed off at Dad's warning glance.

"Too morose!" Daddy exclaimed, switching tactics. "So sorry. Go, go, children, and embrace the joys of youth. Enjoy your party, and call us if you need us!" he trilled, and Rachel shot him an appreciative grin.

"Hey guys!" Brittany exclaimed from behind them. "Ready to go?" she asked.

"Yeah, we were just leaving," Noah said, and the two of them hugged their families good-bye. The presence of Brittany saved Rachel from having to answer any of the questioning looks Noah kept shooting at her, and when they reached the car they were joined by Kurt and Mike and the boys provided enough distraction for her to only get away with saying a few words during the trip to the party.

They all walked in together, but Noah pulled her aside almost immediately. "Hey," he said to her, "come talk to me." He pulled her into an office on the main level and shut the door behind him.

"What's wrong?" he asked her, and he pulled her into his arms. She stiffened slightly, trying to hide her jumble of thoughts, but he felt her stiffen and pulled back from her.

"I thought you would be happy and chattering off the walls by now," he said, frowning a little.

"I am happy," she began. "But I'm also a little freaked out right now and very confused as to why you would think now would be a good time to propose, much less get married."

"Don't you want to get married?" he asked her, his face wrinkling in confusion.

"Yes! Someday," she emphasized. "But not right now. We're about to go to college, Noah! What did you think was going to happen? I'm going to New York, and you're going to be attending community college here in Lima. What would happen when we got married – one of us would have to give up their dreams and their future. And we've worked too hard to give those dreams up so quickly."

"But," Noah began, but Rachel cut him off. She was on a roll now.

"You know how important my future is to me, and you know how important _your_ future is to me, especially since I believe that we will be together forever. But we're 18! I'm not ready to get married! I want to go to school and become an adult and start my career. If I show up at school engaged, no one will take me seriously. They'll all think that I'm just in this until my wedding certificate is filed away, and that I'll graduate with an MRS not a B.A." she ranted. "And then I'll never get any good parts or any good showcase times and no one will ever find out who I am and my career will never take off!"

She was angering him, she knew, but she couldn't help it. "And proposing in front of the entire town? Really? Way to put me on the spot. I couldn't say what I wanted to say, I couldn't talk to you about it and tell you that I loved you, but that no, I don't want to marry you. Not yet. That's why I said someday, Noah, because someday I want to marry you, but that someday is not anywhere in the near future. Okay?" she questioned.

"So, what you're saying is that even though you pretty much said yes on the stage, you don't want to marry me?" he asked her, his voice hard and cold. Rachel had registered a burst of sound from the party and then total silence as Noah had finished asking her his question. She turned towards the door and saw the entire party standing outside the doorway staring at them in shock.

"Let's go," she said to him and tried to take his hand in hers, but he jerked away from her.

"Fine," he snarled back, and walked out to his truck without opening her door for her. She hoisted herself up into the seat, and as soon as she shut her door, he began talking to her.

"I can't believe you would embarrass me like that! In front of everyone we know. I proposed to you at graduation because I thought you would enjoy the importance of it, and because I was pretty fucking sure that you felt the same way about me that I do about you. I see that I was wrong," his voice dripped with venom.

"No, that's not true," she whispered to him, and tears began to well in her eyes. "I love you!" she cried.

"No, you don't, because if you did, you would care more about me than your dreams or what people will think of you at school. You should have had faith in me that I wouldn't ask you to give up your dreams. Instead, you underestimated me and humiliated me," he fumed as he drove. He was driving very fast and the lights were flashing by. Everything was blurred because Rachel had tears streaking down her face.

"I just need some time!" she shouted at him, but he wasn't listening.

"You've had time!" he shouted back, gripping the steering wheel tightly in one hand. "What am I supposed to tell my mother and my sister, huh? What am I supposed to tell all of our friends? What, that you love me, just not enough to marry me?"

"No, just tell them that we're waiting," she said, trying to make peace.

"That only works if there's something to wait on, Rachel," he snapped back at her as he pulled into her driveway. "So is there something to wait on? Will you wear the ring I bought for you?" he asked her harshly.

"I told you, I don't want to go to school engaged," she said. "I still want to be with you. I still love you. Please, please, try to understand what I'm saying," she begged.

"So that's a no." It wasn't a question, it was a statement and the way he said it hurt her heart.

"No, I won't wear the ring, yet," she qualified. "But I will someday."

"That's not good enough, Rachel. Are you embarrassed to be engaged to me, is that what it is? I'm not from a good enough family, I don't have any money, I'm not going to a real college, I don't have a real job? Is that it?" he was shouting at her now, and her front porch light had come on. They were still sitting in the cab of the truck with the engine idling.

"You know that's not true!" she cried, desperate to reassure him.

"If it wasn't true you would marry me," he said sadly.

"Don't be stupid!" she shouted back, getting angrier now. "It's not any of those things. It's what I told you, and if you don't believe me, if you can't have enough faith in me and everything we've been through these last few years to know that I don't care about _any _of that, then maybe _you_ don't really love _me_, and we _shouldn't _get married!"

He reeled back as if she had physically assaulted him. She sighed in defeat and went to get out of the car. "Good night, Noah," she said to him as she climbed from the truck.

"You're not going to let me come in and finish our conversation?" he asked her, incredulous. "I thought I was spending the night tonight."

"After everything that we've just said to each other, I think we need a night apart to think," she told him.

"But," Noah began, but Rachel jumped inside the cab and pulled him towards her for a heart-searing kiss.

"I love you," she told him right before she shut the door to the truck. She walked up the sidewalk to the front door and turned to see him sitting shell-shocked in the truck. She waved at him and went inside the house, locking the door and turning off the porch light as she began to cry in earnest.

She went upstairs to her room and lay on her bed crying, listening to the sound of Noah's truck idling in the driveway. She wasn't sure exactly how long he stayed before he drove away, but she knew that it was enough time for her to decide what needed to be done.

Slowly, she got up and walked zombie-like out of her room and knocked on her fathers' door.

"Rachel, sweetie, what is it? Why are you home so early?" Dad asked her as he answered the door.

"I need to talk to you," she told them, and then she began to tell them about what had happened tonight, and what she had planned for the future.

The next morning she left a few letters on the front hall table, ready to be given to the people who would inevitably come looking for them. She picked up her purse and walked out to her car. Her fathers were standing next to each other and the early morning sunlight was just beginning to glow across their skin.

She felt a lump rise in her throat and her eyes got itchy and watery as she struggled not to cry.

"I'll call you from the road," she told them. "Thank-you for understanding," she whispered to them, and they both hugged her fiercely.

"I love you," she called to them, and climbed into her packed car. She rolled down the window and each of her fathers leaned their heads in through the window to kiss her once on the cheek.

"Drive safely," Daddy said, and she looked up at him nervously.

"Tell him I love him," she said anxiously.

"We will, honey, don't worry. He'll understand," Dad said encouragingly.

"I don't think he will," she whispered, her eyes falling to her lap.

"He might not yet, but he will someday," Daddy said, and she felt a knife pierce through her heart at the use of the word "someday." She didn't know that it could hurt so much.

"I love you," she told them again and then she backed down the driveway.

She rode the interstate for hours, stopping frequently to use the bathroom and get beverages and stretch her legs. She sang along to sad music and she cried. She sang along with empowering music, and she felt vindicated. She talked to her fathers a few times, but the last time she had called, they hadn't answered. She thought that he must have arrived at her house by now, and that they must be telling them that she was gone.

She felt a fist squeeze around her heart, and she nearly ran off the road she was in so much pain. She missed him so much, already, and she couldn't imagine her life without him in it. But she had to go on.

She kept driving as night fell and when she finally reached her destination it was 3 o'clock in the morning. She gathered her purse and her laptop, leaving everything else in the car as 2 figures made their way down the sidewalk to her car.

"Hey, Rach, are you okay?" someone asked as she stumbled slightly getting out of the car.

"Yeah, I'm fine," she said, and she realized that while it wasn't true yet, it would be someday. "How are you, Finn? Quinn?"

She had stayed with Finn and Quinn the remainder of the summer. She talked to her parents and to some of the other glee kids, but she hadn't heard from Noah or his family at all. No one spoke to her about them. It was as if they were a taboo subject. She worried about him, but she didn't want to call him and give him false hope when she had already made up her mind. She ached for him everyday and cried for him every night, but as time went on she stopped crying as long, she stopped aching every second of the day. When she left Maine to go to school, she left it with a healthier heart than she'd arrived with.

That had been almost 4 years ago. The time had flown by, and in just a few weeks she would be performing her final showcase and graduating once more. She still hadn't heard from Noah.


	2. My Back is Broad but it's AHurting

**A/N: Thank-you for all of the support for this story! I would like to take a moment to dedicate this story to my bestie, who suggested that I use this song. I've also turned her into a closet fic reader, and I love that she read my first fic. Yay bestie! Also, all song titles are taken from "Beast of Burden" by the Rolling Stones. **

**Disclaimer: Still own nothing. Except the free frozen turkey I got as a Thanksgiving present from my job...odd, huh.

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**Four years had passed since he had proposed to Rachel on the stage at graduation. Four years had passed since she had accepted his proposal and then shoved it back in his face. It had been four years since he had fought with her in her driveway, and she had last kissed him hard on the mouth. It had been four years since he had seen her slip inside her house and shut the door, turning out the light.

It didn't matter that four years had passed. He still thought of her everyday, almost as often as he thinks of Leah. Four years ago he had finally swallowed his pride and shown up on her doorstep, wanting to make things right. When her fathers had answered the door together, Noah knew that something had happened.

"Where's Rachel?" he asked them, skipping past greeting them. Her car wasn't in the driveway, he noticed, and they were looking at him with almost the same looks of pity they had given him when Leah had died.

"Where is she?" he demanded from them, knowing that she must be gone.

"She explained it all in a letter to you," her dad said, and passed him a thick stack of papers. He sank to the ground and put his back against the doorway. He began to read what she had written to him, and he wondered what possible excuse she could give that would be good enough to justify leaving him without saying good-bye.

He could see where she had re-read the letter after she had typed and printed it. There were splotches on the paper from where her tears had fallen. Just knowing that she had cried over writing him this letter made his heart throb, and he read her final words to him.

After he had finished reading, he knelt forward and began to cry. Rachel's fathers, having watched him read the letter came forward to console him.

"She wanted us to make sure that we told you she loves you," her father said to him, and the words felt as if someone were shoving a branding iron into his brain. He would never get to hear her say those words to him again. He knew she wasn't coming back. He knew he would have to go get her.

He had spent the next four years working constantly. He woke up at 5:30 every day to work-out and then headed downstairs to make breakfast for his sister and dinner for his mom. He got his sister bundled off to school and then he grabbed his hard hat and went to whichever construction site he was posted at that day.

He then went home and showered, changed, fed his sister, and helped her with her homework before bolting out the door every-other-night to attend night classes at LSC. He got home and did homework until he fell asleep (usually at his desk) and then got up again at 5:30am the next day to start all over again. On days when he didn't have class, he studied, did homework, cleaned the house, maintained the lawn, and tried to be helpful to his mother.

In the summers he added pool maintenance to his weekend schedule, and in the winters he added Christmas Tree sales. He was rarely ever sick and took only a week-long vacation every 6 months, in which he crammed for final exams.

His routine was routine, dull and relentless, but it had done what he had intended it to do. He had graduated with a B.A. in Music Theory with a minor in Music Performance. He had maintained a 4.0 average from the first semester of classes, and had participated (when he could) in various showcases.

He had no social life – not only did his schedule not allow for any sort of social life, he had stopped opening up to people and hanging out with them after Rachel had left. He tried to go back to his Puckish behavior (the best defense is a good offense, after all) but 3 years with Rachel had done their damage, and he was not able to return to his nefarious ways.

He had focused everything he had on making sure that he had the grades and the money to make it to graduate school, and he succeeded. He was just getting ready to graduate from LSC and move on to grad school at NYU with a partial scholarship and enough money saved to provide for the rest. He was going to New York. He was going to find Rachel Berry.

"Are you okay, honey?" his mom asked, staring at him. He felt uncomfortable because his mom didn't really do touchy-feely moments, and Noah didn't like to do them either.

"Yeah, mom, I'm fine," he said as he moved through the kitchen making her dinner and cooking his sister's eggs.

"Are you excited about graduation?" she asked him hesitantly. He knew that she must have been planning to have this conversation with him for a while, as she never asked questions that would really lead to in-depth answers. Except Rachel had changed her, slightly. Rachel talked so much that his mom kind of got used to having a 1,000 word response rather than a 10 word response. When she had left, his mom had started slipping back into her old role of quiet and stilted conversationalist.

"It's graduation, mom," he retorted, whisking the eggs extra fast. "The last one didn't work out quite as well as I'd planned, you know," he said sarcastically, "so I'm trying not to hold out too much hope on this one."

"Well, Noah…" his mom began to trail off, and he could only hope that she was beginning to lose steam. "Just know that I'm proud of you, and that your sister is proud of you. We're sad to see you go, but we understand why you're going," she continued, looking shyly down at the kitchen counter.

"You know I'm going to come back as often as I can, right?" he asked her suddenly, forcing her to look at him.

"I'm not going to be like him. I'm not just going to leave and never call, never come back. I'll call all the time. And I'll come back to help out and for big events, like holidays, and just for the weekend, too. And I told you I'd get a job and send you some money," he continued.

"I don't want your money, Noah," his mother said firmly. "I want you to go to NYU and I want you to focus on your classes. If you want to get a job to fulfill some aspect of your life, and it makes you happy, then do it. But you've got plenty of money saved for this, you've got your partial scholarship, and I've got a job, so we'll be fine. Don't worry," she placated him.

"I'll worry anyway," he responded, and served her the dinner that he had prepared for her. "Hey, squirt!" he called up the stairs. "You going to school today or what?"

He heard stomping and then a rush of footsteps down the stairs.

"Sorry, Noah!" his sister said jubilantly and then dug into her eggs. He got her off to school, got his mom off to bed, and then cleaned up from the morning meals. He changed clothes and got into his uniform and trundled off to the construction site for his last day on the job.

"Hey Puckerman!" his foreman shouted at him, and he went over to the management trailer at the site.

"Sir?" he responded.

"Come in here for a sec," the foreman beckoned him, and he followed him into the office. Sitting on the desk was a plain white envelope that was bulging slightly at the sides.

"What's going on, boss?" Noah asked, not sure why he had been called in. Construction workers weren't really the type to throw send-off parties.

"Son, you've been working here for 4 straight years taking whatever job I've got, whatever hours and overtime I've got. You bust your ass in the heat and in the cold and you were only late to the job once – and that was understandable, seeing as how it was your car that threw a tire on the highway," his boss began to ramble, but then he got to the point.

"Thing is, I've never seen someone so dedicated to working construction. Not unless they wanted to move up in the field, which you have no desire to do. Every time I tried to promote you, you declined the position. Which pissed me off, by the way," his boss shot him a stern look before breaking back into a smile.

"So, we all know about how you've been busting your ass to go to school in New York, and we know that most of your money is probably going to be tied up in school and books and living expenses. So me and the guys that have worked with you over the past 4 years got together to chip in and give you a little "fun" money," his boss said, and he thrust the envelope of money at him cheerfully.

"Th-thanks, boss," he stuttered as he began to count the bills inside. "I really appreciate what you and the guys did," he said, starting to sweat slightly as the amount crept over the $1,500 mark.

"Least we could do," his boss replied, and stood from behind the desk. "Now, go home! Take a last day with pay, on me. I'll go ahead and get your paycheck from Nancy and then get your forwarding address for the paycheck for this week, okay?"

"Sure, man," Noah replied, and as he opened the door to the management trailer, he was decked in the face with 2 cream pies. _This isn't a construction gig, it's a Broadway show _he thought, wiping the whipped cream from his face.

"Huh. Good thing you got the day off, eh Puckerman?" his boss laughed as he came outside after Noah. "C'mon, let's get that check…" his former boss laughed at him.

He left the job site covered in whipped cream but gripping a weeks pay plus 4 year bonus in his hand. He wiped off his face with his shirt as he got back in the truck. A day off? With no studying to do? With no preset errands or honey-do lists from his mom to take care of? He hadn't had a single day like that in…four years.

He decided to go for a run, and when he got home he quickly changed into his running gear. He ran a small stretch and then stopped to stretch his muscles and warm them up. Once he was feeling more limber, he began to run again, setting an even pace on the sidewalk.

He began to think about how foolish he was for believing that he could just go to school in New York City and find and reconnect with the girl who had broken his heart four years ago. He knew that it was dumb to believe that she would even want to hear from him again, but still part of him held out hope. She had said "someday" after all.

Was moving to New York and tracking her down the best way to fix his life? Was he running towards a solution, or was he running from a problem? If he left Lima he could try to find her – but was he just trying to find her, or was he trying to leave Lima and his past behind?

He ran on the sidewalks of his neighborhood and out to the side streets. He ran until he had to stop and take a break on a bench at the park. He bought a water from a vending machine and decided to take his break on the grassy hill instead. He lay on the grass and stared up at the sky through his sunglasses, thinking about the future. The last time he had done this was right before Rachel's graduation party, when he had been planning to propose to her.

It had killed him when she had taken back her words. And maybe, four years later, he could see that she hadn't really said yes on the stage, but that didn't change the fact that she led his mom and sister to believe it was true. When everyone had heard him ask her whether or not she really wanted to marry him at the party, he thought he could have died then and there. He wasn't emotional. He didn't have to beg a girl to marry him – he was a badass, after all.

She had hurt his pride immensely and when she had finally gotten herself into the truck he couldn't help but turn to her and begin to defend himself. As he drove through the town on the way to her house, he tried to make sure he wasn't reading too much into anything. He tried to make sure he didn't pull a Rachel and overreact. And to this day, he still thinks that he was in the right, and she was in the wrong. He just wished hadn't hurt this much to be right.

He finished his water and began to stroll slowly towards home. The entire walk home he thought about Rachel and how much he had missed her, and how he wished that he had never driven her away from him four years ago. He thought about how much he hated that she had left without a good-bye, the way his father had left without a good-bye, and that she had made him cry for her.

He hated that she was gone and yet he wished for her everyday. He hated being without her. He felt incredibly stupid when he admitted it, but it was true. Somewhere along the line, Rachel Berry had softened the inner Noah and he had bid adieu to Puck.

When he got back to his house he walked up the stairs to his room and stripped off his damp running gear. He turned on the shower water and stood under the warm spray, letting the warm water soothe his muscles. He found it easier to think about serious things in the shower; it was almost as if it provided a perfect balance to the inner drama.

After he had finished toweling off and wrapping the towel around his torso he walked over to his high school desk and opened his high school copy of Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck. Inside was a packet of white pages, bound with a pink rubber band. He sat down on the edge of his bed and began to read:

Dear Noah,

I'm so sorry to leave you this way. I just know that if I had gone to say good-bye to you, or let you into the house, I would never be able to leave. I think we both know that I need to leave; it's what's best for the both of us.

I do want to marry you; someday. I've always wanted to marry you, and I always will want to marry you. From the moment I found you nearly catatonic in the glee room, I have loved you more than anyone I've ever known. It would be foolish for me to spend the rest of my life with somebody else, when I love you so much.

But I can't marry you now. I have worked too hard for my future to marry you and become a teenaged bride. I need to be taken seriously at school, and I need a man in my life who can support my dreams, not struggle against them.

I know that you have always been afraid that you would let me in too close and that I would leave you if you gave too much of yourself to me. I know that what I'm doing feels like that to you, but I promise you that it's not. I have let you in closer than anyone in my life and it is pure agony to leave without you. I always thought that when I left this place, I'd be leaving with you.

But we both know that if you leave with me, you'll never come back. Your mother and your sister need you, and you need to do some things for yourself. You need to put yourself first, for once. You need to have a future that you can be proud of, Noah.

It has never mattered to me about your economic or social status. I love your mother and your sister, and I think your father's a lout for walking out on you. I would be proud to take you anywhere in my life – I need you everywhere in my life. I need you too much.

I'm afraid that if I take you with me, I will never be able to push myself. I will always want to be with you, and I'll be complacent in whatever I do because I already have you, and I won't be trying to prove anything to anyone, because I've already proved it to you.

It sounds awful of me to say it like that, but it's true. If you came with me, you'd be much too much of a distraction. And I need to focus. You need to focus, too, because you're really, really smart, you just don't let people see it. And you're a very talented musician and singer. And you're my man. My man – you will always be my man.

It may be weeks from now, months from now, years from now, but I would like to hear from you whenever you can forgive me. Whenever you feel you can speak to me again. I know this is going to hurt you and I'm sorry, I never wanted to cause you any pain.

I still love you. I always will.

Love,

Rachel

His hands were shaking as he folded the pages together and wrapped them back up in the pink rubber band. He stuck the packet back in the book and shoved the book into a box on the floor.

He was moving to New York. He was going to get her back.


	3. All I Want is You to Make Love to Me P1

**A/N: Oh. My. God. Last night's episode was absolutely phenomenal. One of my male friends commented on my fb status (the one that said: Today's a Glee day! Yay!) with "You cried, didn't you." Of course I cried! How could you _not_ cry? Phenomenal. Also, Finn singing "I'll Stand by You" to his baby made me feel a little bad about the way I've treated him in this fic, but whatev. Also, this fic is rated M for a reason - and today's installment only begins to illustrate that Mness. Be forewarned. **

**Disclaimer: Thanksgiving is coming. I have procured a turkey. I have not procured any Glee. Get on that!

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**She ambled through the throng of students making their ways to and from the practice rooms and professors' offices. She needed to look as if she didn't have a care in the world. That she had nothing devious planned. Like she was innocent…

She had been innocent once. She had been the good girl, good little Rachel Berry who went to school and got good grades. Who went to glee practice and got the solos and hit all the high notes. She had had an active social life; friends who she loved to be around, and who loved to be around her (craziness) as well. She had had a boyfriend, the most perfect and wonderful man she had ever met, who had loved her and who had taken care of her.

She had left all of that behind. When she had left Quinn and Finn behind in Maine to get a fresh start at Julliard, she had determined that she was going to move forward with her life. But moving forward wasn't exactly what had happened.

She had arrived in New York City with the thrill of anticipation. She had gone to her classes expecting to fall immediately in love with this environment of creativity. She had fallen in love with it, of course – it just hadn't fallen in love with her. Maybe the new Rachel Berry was bitter, jaded. Maybe she was exactly the same, and it took time for people to warm up to her. But whatever it was, she didn't make any friends. It was like the beginning of high school all over again, just without any slushies. Her roommate abhorred her presence. Whenever Rachel was in the room studying or listening to taped glee recordings (no, she wasn't specifically listening to Noah, thank-you very much) her roommate would stomp all over the place and make a huge mess before declaring that she was going out, and that Rachel wasn't invited.

Rachel never got invited. Anywhere. She went to class and sang her heart out and learned musical theory and tried to interact with her fellow students, but no one approached her. No one smiled back at her shy smile. No one smiled back at her star smile, either.

Whenever she spoke to her fathers, she made it seem as if she was living the perfect life – friends, classes, outings, living in NYC, baby. When they came to visit, and inquired about her friends, she told them that she had told them to leave her alone for the weekend, that her dads were coming into town, and she wanted to spend all of that time with them. She hoped (but wasn't sure) that they bought it.

She came home for vacations and spent the majority of her time in her dads' house, reading, working out, and relaxing. She spoke to a few of the glee members by phone, but only Kurt, Quinn, and Finn ever really seemed to get into the conversation. Everyone else appeared to be too disgusted by what she had done to Noah to have any time for her anymore. That, or they didn't know what to say to her.

Quinn and Finn had come to visit her a few times, and they had had a lot of good times in the city. She and Quinn had gone shopping and dragged Finn around like their own personal manservant. They had done all of the touristy things, and some of the not-so touristy things that Rachel had found from her time living there.

But still, she was lonely. She was so lonely. She had been drunkenly propositioned by a few guys she had classes with, but since they didn't look at her when they were sober, she declined. She had only ever been with Noah, and had only ever felt love when having sex. She didn't know how to move forward from that, and she didn't think that getting drunk and "hooking up" with some random guy would make it any easier. So she went about her life, closed up in a cocoon of silence and loneliness.

She finished winding her way through the hallways and paused to knock on Professor Delaney's door. "Yes?" she heard a voice call from inside the office, and she opened the door, smirking slightly as she did.

She hadn't meant for it to happen. She had been working on a piece for her sophomore year showcase on one of the practice stages, and had been almost in tears because she couldn't get all of her emotion out into her music. Professor Delaney had been leaving for the evening when he had found her coming out of the bathroom crying.

He had taken her back to the practice stage, and told her to get up there and do it again. She had never taken one of his classes before, and didn't know him at all, but when he had convinced her to go back to the practice room, she felt a little bit noticed. Not so alone after all.

She had performed her song for him, and maybe it was having someone to perform the song to that made everything explode out of her. She lay all of her emotions on the floor, singing her way through the pain of not having spoken to Noah in two years. She was still waiting for him to call, or to arrive.

The professor had walked up onto the stage after she was done singing and had hugged her and told her that she had done a fantastic job; she had no reason to cry. He had asked her if she would like to work on it again tomorrow, with a professor present for guidance. She had agreed, and as he pulled out of the hug, she thought she felt his right hand graze gently by her breast. She was sure she had imagined it.

Until the next day, when she was on the stage singing, and Professor Delaney stood up from the seats and walked onto the stage.

"No, you're not really emoting here. You need to put some movement into it – not like that, that looks too hokey, but something smooth and fluid. Something natural," he directed, and began to move her limbs around to achieve the effect he desired.

"O-okay," she said, and as he positioned her back towards the stage to try it again, she could swear that his hand dipped a little too low down her back to be appropriate. But he went back to the seats, and Rachel was, again, sure that she had imagined it.

It had continued that way for a few weeks with subtle brushes against her skin. He also took every opportunity (or so it seemed to Rachel) to rework her choreography for different songs. One night when they were wrapping up, Professor Delaney's hand settled gently against her waist.

"Professor, what is it that you want from me?" she asked him boldly. Never let it be said that Rachel Berry couldn't cut straight to the heart of the matter.

"I'm not in any of your classes, you're not my student advisor. You've been helping me for weeks, and I don't really see any return in it for you," she stated.

The professor looked slightly uncomfortable at her words, but he spoke anyway, choosing to lay it out on the line. "I'm very attracted to your voice, Rachel, and that has attracted me to you."

Rachel was (wasn't) shocked – she knew that student-teacher relationships happened, but she hadn't (had) seen one forming here. She knew what he wanted. It helped a little that he said that it was her voice that had drawn him to her in the first place – she found it an easier concept to find attraction through music, rather than through her body or personality. She knew she could be harsh and abrasive sometimes.

"But you're a professor here," she said.

"I know that. And forgive me, but as you aren't in any of my classes, nor have you ever taken my classes, I feel it's different," he responded calmly.

"I don't want a relationship with you," she said, intending the words to sting. From all appearances, they didn't. But she didn't want a relationship with him – she didn't want a relationship with anyone, no one but Noah Puckerman, and he didn't want one with her.

"What I had in mind wasn't really in the vein of relationships," the professor leered at her, and she felt a small jump of revulsion in her stomach. She pushed it down. Noah didn't want her, and she didn't want a relationship, but maybe she could have something… something to tide her over, something that meant nothing and would be easy to break away from, whenever Noah came for her.

It was just sex. That was all it ever was. She never took his classes, but no one ever raised an eyebrow when she went to his office to "discuss" some things with him. They fucked on the stage, in the dressing rooms, in the practice rooms, in the bathroom she had once cried in, and most frequently, in his office. She never took him to her apartment, and he never took her home. They never went on dates; he never brought her flowers or gifts. She never brought him slushies or ties.

It was meaningless, shallow sex, but it helped Rachel get through the years. She was still waiting for Noah, still waiting for him to come and tell her that he was ready, that he had finally forgiven her. That their "someday" was just around the corner.

He hadn't come for her, and she had just finished her degree. She had moved into a different apartment in the city, and she was auditioning for as many different productions as she could while she worked in a coffee shop and as a singing waitress. She had just had an awful shift at the restaurant, and needed to feel better about herself. She had decided to go to the school.

She shut his office door behind her and flicked the lock on the door. She made sure that the shades were pulled down and crossed to sit on his desk in front of him. She spread her legs and he pulled her forward, scooting her to the edge of the desk. As he reached up to pull her panties down, Rachel was lost in a flashback.

_They had only been having sex for a few weeks and their impulse was still to do it as often as they could. She had finished rehearsing with Tina for their upcoming duet and was putting her sheet music away when he sauntered through the stage door. _

_ "Hey baby," he smiled seductively at her. "Want to work out?" _

_ She knew what he meant by "work out" but she wasn't sure where they would do it. "Here?" she asked him. _

_ "Come here," he growled at her, and she skipped across the stage to him and jumped. He caught her and held her to him, she wrapped her legs around his waist. She began to kiss him and as they made out, he walked with her to the wings of the stage and pushed her up against the wall. _

_ His mouth was setting her body on fire; he was kissing her earlobes, her neck, her collarbone. She wanted to feel his hands on her and she began to attempt to slide down the wall. _

_ "No," he growled, and Rachel smiled seductively at his command. _

_ "But I want," she began, pouting. _

_ "I know what you want," he said to her, and shivers shot up and down her spine. He moved her from the wall to the stage manager's podium and sat her down on top. _

_ "Hold onto these," he said, wrapping her hands in the curtain cables. _

_ "Wha?" she began, but she soon lost all semblance of rational thought as he hiked up her skirt and pulled her panties down her legs and stuffed them into his pocket. He leaned forward and put his mouth onto her and she could feel the little volts of electricity course through her. _

_ She hissed in her breath and wrapped her hands as tightly around the cables as she could. His mouth – his _tongue_ felt absolutely amazing and she could feel herself begin to creep up over the edge as his mouth moved against her. _

She snapped back into the present. Professor Delaney was administering to her much like Noah had taken care of her that day, and though she could feel her release beginning to build, it had ebbed a little when she had snapped out of her daydream.

Instead of letting her finish, the professor stood up and pushed her back onto the top of his desk. He unzipped his fly and slowly rolled a condom down the length of his dick. He entered her hard with a violent thrust, and when she yelped he pushed her back onto the desktop, covering her mouth with his hand. He continued to fuck her the way that he wanted to fuck her.

_Noah never did that. They had had some wild moments, but they were wild moments in which both of their needs and desires were present. He had taken care never to hurt her, and to always make her feel loved. When he had found out that one of her fantasies was to have sex on a picnic table in the rain, he had waited until there was a huge storm one night, and had driven her to the neighborhood playground. _

_ He had pulled her, laughing, from the car and through the rain to the picnic area that was set back from the parking lot and playground. It was dark. They were alone. Rachel's shirt had gotten stuck to her skin as she ran through the downpour, and she pulled it away from her stomach and let it suck back to her with a loud "thwwwk" noise. She laughed. _

_ She had turned to see Noah standing shirtless in the rain, and her breath caught in her throat. He had looked at her then, and the hunger in his eyes almost drove her to her knees. Instead, he had walked back under the canopy and she had pulled him to her. She had perched herself on top of one of the picnic tables, and kissed him. _

_ He had been forceful but gentle as they had made love on the picnic table. When she had cried out in pain from the awkward angle and unsupportive nature of the table, he had paused to make sure she was okay, and had insisted that they switch positions so that she could be comfortable and enjoy her fantasy. _

"Oh… yes!" Professor Delaney grunted and she felt him push hard into her. That was all she felt. She didn't feel any sort of release. She didn't feel any sort of attraction to this man. What had started off as a way to get some sort of personal contact while waiting for Noah had turned into a game in which she allowed him to fuck her, and she allowed herself to think of having sex with Noah.

The professor leaned back and zipped his dick back into his pants. She stood from the desk and slipped her panties back up her legs. She walked towards the door, straightening her hair as she went.

"See you again, soon?" the professor asked, and she reached out to open the door.

"No," she said quietly, and shut the door behind her.

She made it all the way to the bathroom at the end of the hall before she allowed herself to cry. She wasn't crying because of Professor Delaney – he had meant nothing to her. He had never meant anything. She was crying for Noah.

_Noah, I need you_ she thought as she splashed water on her face. _Noah, please come and find me_ she begged as she pressed paper towels over her face. _Noah, I'm waiting, I'm waiting for you. _


	4. I Walked for Miles, My Feet are Hurting

**A/N: Rated M for alcohol use - be aware! Also, sorry it's so short, there's just so much that I decided to move to the next chapter to make it flow better. Sorry! **

**Disclaimer: I don't own it, okay?

* * *

**He had made it to New York in his trusty old truck with a truck bed full of his belongings. He had moved into his apartment (no dorms for graduate students) and stowed his car at a long term parking garage. Once he finished putting everything away he decided to go out and experience New York nightlife.

He didn't walk far, just to a bar down the street from his apartment. He knew it would be a good idea to have a handy neighborhood bar within walking distance of his residence. Stumbling the shortest way home was always the best idea. He pulled open the bar door and stepped inside.

It was a warm, low-lit classic bar with mahogany and gold accents. Very I'm-trying-to-be-posh. He made his way to the bar and ordered a double Jack and Coke on the rocks. He sat there, observing the crowd, hoping for a glimpse of warm brown hair or a familiar eye. He threw back drink after drink, trying to spot her face anywhere in the crowd. His vision began to blur and his speech was slurring, but he held out hope, trying to believe that tonight would be the first time he would see her in four years.

Another Jack and Coke later, he was unable to hold out hope any longer. He had moved from the stages of happy glowy drunk to almost morose drunk, and he knew he had better begin the stumble home. He threw some bills down on the counter and walked out the door, struggling up the hill to his apartment.

The next morning he went to orientation with a killer hangover. His brain felt like it had been shrink-wrapped while he slept, and his eyes were dry and scratchy. There was a low ringing noise in both of his ears and his throat was _parched_. He sat through the entire orientation seminar and then registered for classes. He went home, took a nap, and got up to go to the next closest bar.

This pattern continued every day – each morning he would wake-up and choke down 6 Motrin and a glass of water. Each morning he'd stumble around his apartment gathering clothes and books and then hobble to class as fast as he could. He'd get through his classes, come home, sleep, and then possibly spend an hour or two on homework before going out to get shit-ass wasted.

The first week, he thinks he sees her no less than 217 times. He keeps getting small glimpses of her hair out of his peripheral vision, but by the time he's turned to catch her, he can't see her anymore. He tries to tell himself to calm down and to only look at what he can really see.

The second week, he thinks he sees her no less than 150 times. It's a better number than the week before, but he's still jumping at things just outside of his field of vision. He thinks that when he jumps to look at what he might have seen is when she passes by on the other side of him, totally unknowing.

The third week, he thinks he sees her no more than 60 times. He's stopped seeing small flashes of her hair, or the brilliance of her smile. Small things normally draw his attention and make him wonder – the way a girl is wearing one of the exact same headbands Rachel wore in high school. The way a girl's legs will look emerging from one of those teeny-tiny skirts she wore. The way a girl in a hippie dress will gather his attention. The way a girl zooms through the crowd, head down, grabs him because he remembers the way she used to look after he had slushied her in the face.

By the end of the fourth week, he is beginning to lose hope. He has been to 28 different bars, and has only seen a single person be the same in any of the bars. He has seen more faces (and more false Rachel's) in the last four weeks than he has in the last four years. He knows how many people there are living in this city, much less visiting it. He knows that the odds are small, and that he might not find her. His music begins to slip towards the early 90's grunge period and he realizes that he probably won't find her.

At the end of the fifth week, as he slams against his apartment door and fumbles for his keys, he wonders if instead of going out every night to find Rachel, he's now going out every night to drink because he knows he won't find her. He slams another beer before he passes out face down on his sofa.

The next morning, he stiffly gets out of the face plant position and tries to stand up. He trips over the cord of his cell phone charger, and shouts as he falls to the floor. Cursing, he untangles himself from the cord and checks his phone, realizing that it's already 8:30. He has class in 15 minutes, and he has no idea where his guitar theory book is.

He bolts through the apartment, shifting papers and moving trash. He grabs his books, his wallet, his phone, his keys and shoves everything into his black backpack before running out the door. He pauses to lock the eighty-seven locks on the door and then full-out _runs_ out of the building and the subsequent four blocks to class. He races into the classroom, wheezing, and gets a small stare from his professor.

"Thank-you for joining us, Mr. Puckerman," the professor snidely jibed at him.

"Anytime, sir," he said, trying to stop his brain from throbbing at top volume. He flopped into a seat in the back of the room and opened his book in front of him. As he stared down at the chapter in front of him, he didn't register his eyes closing or his face settling gently onto the pages of the book.

He woke to see his professor standing in front of him in an empty classroom.

"Oh my god!" he shouted and jerked upright, looking wildly around the room. "Oh my god, I'm so sorry!" he began to stammer his apologies, but his professor stared back at him, unmoved.

"Mr. Puckerman, what was it about today's lesson that you did not find particularly enervating?" the professor queried.

"I'm so sorry, sir, I was trying to follow along in the book, and I don't even remember thinking about falling asleep or actually falling asleep at all. I would never intentionally disrespect you like that, sir," he spat out.

"Be that as it may, you were late to my class, and then you fell asleep in my class without listening to a word of instruction. This is also not the first time that you have been either physically or mentally absent from this class, Mr. Puckerman. Your homework has been substandard, your showcase selections deplorable, your projects incomprehensible, and I have begun to wonder whether or not you even care to keep your scholarship and remain at this school," the professor responded.

"Additionally, you often reek of alcohol and are sometimes still drunk from the night before when you arrive in this classroom. You belch and are rude to your fellow students, especially when you haven't had time to work through some of the hangover yet," the professor continued.

"May I suggest that instead of drinking your life away while attempting to drink your problems away, you focus that energy instead on your music and your education? When I reviewed your application with the admissions committee, I felt particularly strongly that you deserved to receive a scholarship to this institution. Your behavior thus far has made me question whether or not I was correct in helping to grant you scholarship and enrollment here," Noah was listening to his professor speak and felt every word as a tiny knife in his brain.

"Take the weekend to think about it," his professor concluded, "and if you'd rather get drunk than go to school, withdraw from classes." With that, Noah watched as he picked up his briefcase and left him sitting alone in the room.

He continued to be mentally absent from the rest of his classes, but not because he was still fighting a hangover. Instead, he was trying to figure out where he had gone wrong, and how he had let himself slide so far, so fast. He had broken from his routine, and suddenly he was like a kid in a candy store, giving himself unlimited access to everything he missed during his undergraduate degree.

He wandered back to his apartment and trudged up the stairs to his door. He unlocked the seventy-two locks and after he shut the door behind him, he began stripping down to his boxers. He crawled into his bed and lay there with his head on the pillows trying to find the blissful emptiness of sleep. His mind was still turning over what his first class professor (Professor Wade) had said to him that morning.

He fell asleep thinking about what had been said to him, and how he had lost track of himself as fast as he had. He had strange dreams about running around the cogs of a watch and when he woke up he was sweating and it was dark outside.

He stumbled to his bathroom and felt his knees pop as he stood in front of the sink. He looked like shit. He had a three-day stubble going on that looked ridiculous. He had kept his hair at the same length Rachel liked it, but now it was looking shaggy and unkempt. There were bags underneath his eyes and he noticed tiny creases at the corner of his mouth. His skin looked sallow and he found that he was beginning to get a beer belly because he hadn't been working out consistently (or at all, since moving to New York).

_I'm not going out tonight_ he decided, and began to tidy up the shit in his apartment. He threw away bags of trash and took them all to the incinerator chute. He wiped down all of the counters and ran the dishwasher. He dusted every surface and Pledged the wood furniture. He scrubbed the bathroom (especially the shower) and vacuumed all the carpeting. He dragged himself to a Laundromat and did all of the dirty laundry that had been piling up around his apartment. When he got home, he hung it all up on hangers.

At 11:30, with the apartment clean he decided to take a shower and clean himself up. He scrubbed himself down in the shower and then toweled himself dry. Standing in front of his bathroom sink he changed his razor blade and shaved off the stubble. After he finished shaving he grabbed his hair scissors (it was a hell of a lot cheaper than going to a barber) and trimmed the shag off of his head.

He got into his pajamas and flopped down onto the sofa to stare at the TV. After 15 minutes of not being able to find anything to watch, he decided he couldn't be alone his apartment anymore. He needed to go out and be around people. He just wouldn't drink, that was all.

At 1:30 in the morning, he was shit-faced wasted propping himself up on the bar with an elbow. In the space of 45 minutes, he had downed 5 double Jack and Cokes and 2 Newcastle's, and was now trying to explain to the guy next to him why he was mad that he got drunk. The guy next to him kept telling him that drunk hurt less than sober, so it was okay. Noah wasn't sure how he felt about that.

He lurched off of his bar chair towards the bathroom and slid his fingers down the wall to make sure he stayed upright. He peed for what seemed like 20 minutes, and then washed his hands and got himself back to the bar.

"Hey kid," the bartender shouted at him over the music. "That girl at the end of the bar just bought you a Mind Eraser; you game?" she asked.

"What the fuck is a Mind Eraser?" he asked her (a bit belligerently).

"Layered drink of vodka, tonic water, and Kahlua on the rocks," she told him. "You suck it up through a straw. First person to finish wins. You game?" she asked him again.

"Sure," he mumbled, and she made the shot and handed it to him.

"Okay, you ready?" she asked him, and he nodded and raised his head at the girl who had bought him the drink. She sauntered down to him and he could feel himself grin lazily at her.

"Okay, get set, and go!" the bartender started them, and Noah sucked the drink through the straw and down his throat so fast he could barely feel it burn on the way down. He stood triumphantly with his arms raised in the air and staggered slightly backwards as he lost his balance.

"Champ!" the bartender cried in good humor, and walked away.

"So you win," the girl smiled at him seductively. "What do you want to claim for your prize?" she asked him, and caught her lip in her teeth.

The way she held her lower lip with her teeth reminded him instantly of Rachel and he felt the black hole in his chest open again. He wanted to find her and be with _her_, not some slutty girl in a bar who didn't give two shits about him.

"You're not Rachel," he mumbled drunkenly to her, and began to turn away.

"Who's Rachel?" the girl demanded, and yanked on his shoulder.

"What?" someone behind him said, and he felt his body freeze. Every joint in his body locked in place, and he was stuck on lockdown as his alcohol-sodden brain attempted to process everything that was rushing through him. That voice. The smell of honeysuckle and vanilla that subtly enveloped her. The way he felt when her eyes were on him.

"Rachel?" he whispered, turning around in an unsteady circle to see the woman of his dreams standing before him, her mouth open in shock.


	5. All I Want is You to Make Love to Me P2

**A/N: Just an FYI, Noah's not an alcoholic. He just doesn't do so well with change and/or freedom, really. Also, check out the new People for a yummy Glee picture. **

**Disclaimer: I can't even win at Monopoly, what makes you think I could own Glee?

* * *

**She had just finished another night as a singing waitress in a crappy diner that served crappy food. Her only happiness with the job came from the fact that, unlike Monica on Friends, she didn't have to wear a costume to work. She had decided to go to the bar right down the street from her apartment because they did open mike after 2am. It was just nearing 1:45. Figuring that she would have a quick drink and then sing her heart out for a song or two, she sat down at the bar.

"What can I get for you?" the bartender asked as she gathered different liquors.

"Vodka tonic, please," Rachel responded politely.

She sipped her drink quickly, feeling the alcohol pour warmth through her esophagus. She decided to pay out and go to the bathroom before open mike started, so that she could sing her songs and leave. She gave some cash to the bartender – keep the change – and began to wind her way around the large bar that dominated the majority of the room.

She was just about to make it to the corner of the bar where the bathrooms were when she heard someone say her name. Almost involuntarily, she called out, "What?" even though she knew that no one was referring to her – four years with no friends or close acquaintances will give that certainty to a girl.

Instead as she turned around she saw a skanky looking girl with her fingers hooked into a man's shoulder. She couldn't see the front of him, but she didn't need to. She could tell by the way he held himself, the way that there was a stiffness locked into his every feature, the color of his hair, that it was Noah. It had to be Noah.

She remained guarded in case it wasn't Noah and she was wrong, but as she watched him drunkenly turn around to face her, her breath caught in her throat. Yes, he looked absolutely wasted, but he was still Noah, and he had come to New York City. He was standing right in front of her for the first time in four years. Her eyes drank him in hungrily, as if she would never be able to get her fill of him.

"Noah?" she questioned, and stepped forward. She watched as his eyes flashed from happiness to elation to confusion to anger and then back to confusion. She began to wonder if she was wrong, and he hadn't come to find her, he was only there by pure chance and meeting up with the girl who broke his heart probably wasn't in his plans for the evening.

"Rachel," he slurred, and then stumbled towards her. She caught him in her arms and was barely able to ensure that he stood upright. "You're here," he said, and he fell backwards onto a bar chair.

"I'm here…" she said, at a loss for words. She had only ever seen him drunk once before, and it had been an awful experience.

_It had been a year after Leah had died and it was February in Ohio. The sun seemed to have permanently vanished from the sky and everything was overcast and grey – it had been for a week or so. She had waited for him in the parking lot of the cemetery after she worked on a song from "A Chorus Line" with Artie, Mercedes, Brittany, and Ginger. She had waited in the parking lot for a while, trying to call his cell phone and his house phone. He hadn't answered either. _

_ Out of nowhere, through the trees at the edge of the cemetery, Noah appeared. She watched him from her car as he wove between the trees and the other cars in the parking lot. He was stumbling a lot and she could hear him singing but she couldn't make out the song. _

_ She got out of the car and met him in the middle of the lot. He threw his arms around her and she settled into his chest, a move they had perfected over the last few months. She twisted in his arms to look him in the eye. _

_ "Noah, what's that smell?" she asked him, eyebrow raised. _

_ "Whasmell?" she received in response, and she placed the odor. It was alcohol. Seeping from his breath and traveling in a cloud with him. _

_ "You're drunk, aren't you?" she questioned him, pulling away. _

_ "No, not drunk," he mumbled. _

_ "Yes, you are. Come on, we're going home so that you can sober up, and then we'll come back, okay?" she said, trying to lead him to the car by the hand. _

_ "No! I want to see her now!" he shouted, and she jumped back as if she had been burned. He almost never raised his voice around her and she had never seen him drunk before, as she had never gone to any of the parties he attended before joining glee. _

_ "Noah, you don't want to go talk to your little girl when you're drunk. You don't want her to see you like that and know that you got wasted because you miss her. Come on, let's go home," she attempted to reason with him. _

_ "I want to see her! She knows how much this hurts me, I tell her all the time. She would understand, she would get that…get that…" he trailed off as his eyes filled with tears. _

_ "Come home, Noah," she whispered to him, and pulled his hand into hers. He trailed unsteadily after her towards the car. Once she had gotten him settled into the passenger seat and strapped him in with the seatbelt, she went around to her side of the car. When she got in, she noticed that he was continuing a conversation as if she had been there the whole time. _

_ "just not fair, you know? And I thought that it might feel better to forget about everything for a little while and just get the pain to go away for a second, so that I would be okay. I can't believe it's been a year," he drunk-talked to himself. _

_ "I know," she said to him as she drove them to her fathers' house. She got him out of the car and helped him lurch up the stairs. Once she had gotten him into the room, she locked the bedroom door behind her and began to remove his clothing. He began to try to grab her, but she swatted his hands away. _

_ "No, this is not the time for that sort of behavior" she admonished him, and he meekly pulled his hands from her body. _

_ She finished undressing him and then got him underneath the covers. She then grabbed some Motrin and the trashcan from the bathroom and filled it with an empty plastic bag. She set the Motrin on the nightstand and the trashcan on the ground next to him and told him she would be right back. _

_ She raced downstairs and got him a glass of water, and when she came back upstairs, he was lying on his back in bed. _

_ "Noah!" she said sharply, and he twitched at the sound of her voice. She set the water down next to the painkillers and began to grapple his body into a sideways sleeping position. _

_ "Stay on your side in case you have to vomit," she warned him. _

_ "But I want to see you," he said, and she sighed. _

_ "Well roll to your other side, and you can see me that way," she compromised, and lay down on the bed next to him. He had his eyes open at half-mast, and his breath reeked of alcohol, but the alcohol smell was better than the reek of vomit, so she didn't complain. _

_ He reached out his fingers to hers and twined them together. _

_ "'M sorry," he slurred. "I thought if I dealt with stuff the old way, it would be okay. I was wrong…" _

_ "I'm sorry you're hurting," she whispered to him, and pressed a kiss to his forehead. "But we'll get through this together, okay?" _

_ "Okay," he whispered back to her, and then fell asleep with his mouth open; his fingers still intertwined with hers. _

She pulled back to the present. Noah was slumped onto the bar chair in front of her, obviously drunk. She knew that open mike night was now a bust, but she couldn't help but be overjoyed. Noah was here, in front of her, live and in person after all of these years. He was drunk and he needed help. Plus, she wasn't sure if he would even remember meeting up with her after the amount of alcohol it appeared he had consumed, so she decided to take matters into her own hands.

"Has he taken care of his tab?" she asked the bartender, shouting across the crowd.

"Not yet," the bartender replied, and thrust a receipt book at her. "Make sure he does it before he pukes everywhere, okay?"

"Here," Rachel sighed, and pulled out her wallet as she glanced at the bill. _Sweet Jesus_ she thought as she took in the amount. She pulled some bills from her wallet and placed them on the counter. "Thanks for taking care of him," she thanked the girl.

"Man, that Mind Eraser was probably too much for him," the girl said, and she took the receipt book and the cash from the bar and moved to the register.

_Mind Eraser_? She questioned, but she didn't have time to really think about the implications of the beverage because she was trying to hoist Noah off of the stool.

"Come on, Noah, let's go home," she said, and she felt the wave of nostalgia hit her afresh. She could tell by the way he solidified slightly beneath her hands that he had felt it, too.

She got him up from the chair and slung his arm over her shoulders. She began to attempt to walk with him out of the bar, him staggering and leaning heavily on her, her crumpling slightly under his weight and height. As she passed through the doorway a group of men standing outside began to laugh at her and told her to ditch the drunk and come home with them. Four years of city living took over, and Rachel flipped them the bird and continued to stumble down the sidewalk with Noah.

"Rachel Berry doesn't give the bird, she's too good for that," Noah said, and she felt a sting at his words. She knew that he would still be upset about everything that happened, but she had hoped to save those conversations for less alcohol-soaked moments.

"Rachel Berry's not too good for anything," she whispered under her breath, hoping that he wouldn't hear her. He didn't say anything after that, so she continued the trudge home.

She got him inside her building and onto the elevator. He slumped against the elevator wall while she fished her keys from her purse. When the floor chime dinged, he flinched, as if the sound was personally abusing him. She slipped his arm back around her shoulders and peeled him off the wall.

"Let's go, cowboy," she said, and got him down the hallway to her apartment door. She undid the locks and pushed him inside. He stumbled to a halt in her front entrance and stopped, looking warily around the room.

"Where are we?" he asked her, confused.

"We're at my apartment. Here," she said, and led him to the bathroom. "Go to the bathroom, brush your teeth, wash your face, that sort of thing. There are towels on the rack for you to use. Do you need help?"

"Nah, I got it," he said, pulling himself up, and he walked into the bathroom and locked the door behind him. On the other side of the door she could hear him begin to retch, and she moved to the kitchen where she got him a glass of water and poured herself a glass of wine.

She was waiting in the living room when he finally emerged from the bathroom; a sheen of sweat across his face.

"Are you okay?" she asked him, and handed him the glass of water and a few Motrin.

"Perfect," he said and then sank to his knees. "Oops."

"Looks like you need to sleep it off," she said, and helped him get to his feet. Once he was standing she led him to her bedroom and stood by the edge of the bed.

"Here, make yourself comfortable. I'll be right back," she said awkwardly. She left the room and got him another glass of water and brought the bathroom trash can into the room with an empty plastic bag inside it. Déjà vu washed over her as she saw that he was lying on his back in her bed.

"Noah!" she said sternly, grabbing his attention. "Lay on your side!"

"Sure," he mumbled to her, and rolled so that he was facing the outside of the bed, away from her side.

"Feel better," she said to him, and placed the water and the trashcan by his side.

"Mmmm" was the only noise he made, and then she watched as he slipped into sleep. His mouth hung slack against the pillow and she stared at his lips, remembering what it was like to kiss them. She had missed the sweet pressure of his kisses, the way he tasted, the way she got wrapped up in every aspect of him when he kissed her.

Her eyes took in his appearance after four years. He had changed, but he hadn't changed, not really. Yes, he looked more like a man now than he had four years ago, but he was still Noah, still familiar. Yes, there was the freckle on his left shoulder that she traced with her tongue to drive him crazy. Yes, there was the scar on his left hand from when he had punched the brick wall outside the school and split his knuckles open.

His skin was still smooth and his hair was the same length it had been when she had left him behind four years ago. His collarbone still swooped seductively over his chest, and he slept with the covers pulled up just enough to give her a tantalizing peek at his physique, but too much to give everything away.

She watched him sleep and thought about how much she had missed him. She had been alone for four years because she had thought that her future, that her artistic integrity, was more important than true love. She had felt justified in her actions at the time and for most of the remaining years, but there were still moments where she looked around at her life and thought, "What? I gave up everything for this?"

She knew that she had hurt him incredibly when she had left him, but her fathers had supported her when she had packed up all of her things and left town. She had often wondered if she had made too hasty an exit from Lima. She wished that she could push a "Might-Have-Been" button and see what life would have been like for her if she hadn't run away from her problems.

Still, she felt a little bit more whole now than she had in four years. Noah may be drunk and passed out on her bed, but he was still _here_ after all of these years. Maybe it had just taken him four years to be able to forgive her. Maybe it was an accidental run-in and he _wasn't_ able to forgive her yet. But he was still here, asleep, in her room as if no time had passed at all.

He stirred slightly in his sleep and she left the room to refill her glass of wine. She settled back into the chair to watch him some more, and at some point her head tilted to the side and she fell asleep in the chair, watching his chest rise and fall with each breath he took.


	6. Am I Hard Enough?

**A/N: Sorry for the late post - my little sister (who lives with me) is leaving tomorrow to go to our parents' for Thanksgiving, and we ended up having a little craziness tonight before she left. This Wednesday will be the first time she and I have ever watched Glee without each other...sad day. In any event, hope you enjoy the chapter! **

**Disclaimer: Bring on December 8th. That's all I'm saying.

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**He woke up on the edge of a familiar bed. It was familiar, scarily so, but it wasn't his own bed. He hadn't woken up in a bed other than his own in four years, so he couldn't place how the bed was familiar to him. Was he home? Was he sick?

He cracked open an eye and blearily started searching the room. Oh. Wow. His head fucking _hurt_. He'd had hangovers before, but he had never had a hangover this bad. Normally he could remember what had gotten him into this state, but at the moment, he was at a total loss. It didn't matter. What mattered was that it was fucking _bright_ and the light was shining through the blinds on the window like they weren't even there. His mouth tasted like sawdust and had the texture of cold potatoes – or sandpaper, whichever you prefer. His throat literally felt like it had been transported to the Sahara in his sleep.

He knew better than to move around immediately. Eye movement alone had set off the worst types of hangover pain he had ever felt – he had no idea how stomach movement would go over at this time. Instead, he let his eyes adjust to the room. The room was painted a stark, bright white. The furniture was smooth wood, all dark. The décor was tasteful and sparse. He felt like he had awoken in a model home.

_Does anyone even live here?_ He asked himself, struggling to find an item that screamed "personal" at him. He glanced around the room noting the white sheets, the tasteful black-and-white photographs of nondescript plant life, the alarm clock, the lamps, the generic books. Everything seemed so bland, so chosen, so…normal. _It must be a model home_ he thought. _No person could literally strive to be this mainstream and generic in their bedroom. _

His eyes washed over the mirror, the closed jewelry box on the dresser. The drawers were all shut neatly, knobs in a perfect row, all polished to a bright silver luster. No edges of clothing protruded from the edges of the drawers. Not a speck of dust shone on the lampshade on the nightstand to the left of the bed. The chaise lounge cushions were perfectly fluffed, as if no one had ever sat on them before. The closet doors were shut and blank. He saw nothing that indicated any life ever held temporal presence within these walls.

_How did I end up asleep in a model home? _He asked himself, trying to pull the fog from his brain. He decided that it was best to get out of there before anyone caught him, and then play 20 Questions with himself. He rolled closer to the edge of the bed and glanced down, searching out a good location to place his feet.

_What the fuck? _he thought as he took in the sight on the floor in front of him. Placed evenly within reaching distance of the others was a trash can with an empty liner, a bottle of water, and a bottle of Motrin. Startled, he rolled back onto his back on the pillows. Maybe he wasn't in a model home. No model home had ever let him stay asleep and fight a hangover while laying out water and Motrin by the side of their model bed. _So where was he? _

He stared at the ceiling fan for a moment, attempting to process everything had had seen and felt since he had woken up. First, he was in a familiar bed (but familiar how?), second, it looked like no one lived where he had passed out, third, someone had taken the care to place out drunk-over aids for him while he slept. Which indicated that someone who cared about him had taken him someplace he had been before while he had been drunk, and had surmised that he would need assistance when he awoke.

_Surmise is too big a word when you're hungover_ he scolded himself, and then rolled back toward the edge of the bed. He reached down and popped the top of the bottle of Motrin and threw 6 orange tablets into his mouth. He then grabbed the water and spun the cap of it off onto the floor while he chugged half of the liter bottle.

_Shit, I dropped the cap_ he thought, and then turned almost all the way onto his stomach to lean over the edge of the bed to find it. He was blindly placing his hand underneath the bed skirt when he found the missing bottle cap. As he reached up to place it on the top of the nightstand, he noticed that the nightstand drawer had a tiny corner of paper sticking out of its upper edge.

Curious to find out where he was and why, he set the bottle cap down and then slowly, as silently as possible, slid open the drawer. He found nothing telling at first glance, so he picked up the scrap of paper and unfolded it to reveal a message.

The note was worn, as if it had been written many years ago. The ink was slightly faded and the paper soft, but the message jumped out at him from the page. It read, "I love you." It was written in his own handwriting.

_Where am I?_ he started to panic, and felt the heat rise in his shoulders and the pressure rise in his temples. He pawed through the drawer looking for anything with a name, a date, a picture on it, but to no avail. Bolstered by his need to discover where he was (and why someone had a note reading "I love you" in his handwriting) he lurched up from beneath the sheets (white, and bedframe unfamiliar) to stumble towards the door.

He leaned against the door listening for the sound of movement. He heard nothing and struggled to regain his balance. Once he felt more human he slowly turned the knob on the door handle and cracked open the door. Completely unfamiliar hallway. Completely unfamiliar wall art. Completely unfamiliar door.

He moved stealthily to the edge of the wall that separated the walkway between the door of the bedroom and the door in front of him. He listened hard and, hearing no movement, peered around the corner to check for signs of life. There wasn't anyone in the room, and he skittered across the hallway to the other room.

Again, silently, he twisted the knob on the door and cracked it open. Bathroom. _Thank God_ he thought, and then opened the door farther. The bathroom was again white and simple with warm brown and dark wood accents throughout. There were no personal effects as far as he could see. He moved to the toilet and as he relieved himself his eyes searched the bathroom, looking for a small detail that would give the owner away. His eyes settled on the medicine cabinet, and as he flushed the toilet and adjusted his boxers. _Where were his clothes? _

He must have taken off his shirt and pants at some point because he doubted that he would have gotten to this apartment in just his boxers, as drunk as his hangover proved he had been. Moving past the inconvenience, he walked to the medicine cabinet and opened it.

Relief and sadness began to sweep through him. The owner hadn't attempted to hide any trace of their personality here. There were no generic items, but there weren't any personal items either. There were no bottles of medication with labels on them, there wasn't a packet of birth control and a prescription for a refill right next to it. But the contents of the medicine cabinet told him clearly who it belonged to. In truth, he had known from the moment he had opened his note to her in the bedroom.

The sunscreen that she always kept in the upper left corner of her medicine cabinet in Lima "just in case" was still the same brand. The way she arranged her over-the-counter medications (Advil, Excedrin, Motrin, Sudafed, Tylenol) was still the same – alphabetical order, with a large space the Motrin bottle in the bedroom would occupy. The particular moisturizer she used. The salt scrub that he knew she loved when she needed to relax. The bubble bath that Ginger had given her that she was afraid to try. It was all Rachel's. He was in Rachel Berry's apartment.

He began to panic. He had spent four years waiting for her, working for her, searching for her, and the night he finally made his way back to her and found her… he couldn't remember? Where had he found her? What had she said? What had _he_ said? How had he gotten back here? Where was _here _exactly, anyway? Where was she now? What had they done? Had he kissed her – oh man, he hoped he hadn't kissed her. He wanted to _remember that_, godammit. He always thought that kissing her again would feel like coming home.

He was tempted to sink to his knees and worship the porcelain god, he was so nauseous. Instead, he steadied himself and looked at his reflection in the mirror. _You can do this_ he told himself. He took a deep breath and opened the door to the hallway, not bothering with stealth and silence this time.

He heard nothing in response. He moved into the center of the hallway and went into her living room. Her living room didn't look as if it reflected any of her personal taste – it was aesthetically sparse and impersonal. It was generic. It wasn't Rachel Berry. There weren't any photographs anywhere in the living room, and he wandered through the living room to the breakfast nook and then the kitchen. In the kitchen, he stared at her refrigerator, trying to determine what kind of person she was now; how much she had changed.

He was unable to tell anything. The refrigerator was cold and stainless steel and impersonal. There were no photographs magnetized to the doors. There were no notes stuck here and tacked there. No coupons, no reminders, no newspaper clippings, no nothing. Just blank steel. There were blank black circular magnets that dotted the surface, as if they wished to hold something in place. The grocery list was on the front of the fridge, blank. Cylindrical spice containers were magnetized to the side of the fridge, but they were empty. Their clear caps gave them away.

The inside of the fridge held no answers for him either – it was mostly empty, therefore, not a lot of resolution there. He moved on from the kitchen and opened her laundry nook and her front hall closet, finding nothing. Finally, he opened the door just off the front entry, and found what he was looking for.

The room was small but painted in a deep rose with white and black accents. Black-and-white photographs of the Eiffel Tower and Paris dotted the walls, interspersed with photographs of people smiling, laughing, dancing, and singing. There was a small chocolate-colored sofa in the room set back against the wall. He sat on it and began to absorb everything in the room.

In front of him was a projection screen. The projector hung from above his head. Underneath the projection screen and alongside of it were shelves that housed her many movies and musicals. _A Chorus Line, Chicago, Grease, Moulin Rouge, Rent, The Sound of Music _were just a few that he recognized. In the corner, to the right of the shelves was a small closet with a closed door. Along the wall the closet was on ran bookshelves that dominated the entire wall, with only a small space set out for a window that overlooked the street below and the buildings alongside of hers. The bookshelves were filled with books, scores, notes, and plays. There was an extremely comfy looking cream-colored chair in the corner with a reading lamp behind it.

The entire room screamed Rachel Berry. In addition to her books and movies, she had placed pictures up on the walls and on the shelves. The photograph of New Directions winning Sectionals and placing second at Nationals that year hung on the wall. There was a picture of Rachel surrounded by everyone from glee; all of them smiling. Another picture of Rachel standing with Quinn and Finn in front of a house he didn't know was posted on the wall, as well as a picture of the three of them standing in Times Square.

There were other photographs, too. There was a photograph of the two of them at the graduation party on a shelf. There was another photograph of them before senior prom next to it. There were pictures of the two of them everywhere. Prominently displayed on the end table next to the sofa was the picture he loved the most – the one of her kissing him at the end of "Break Free." She looked completely in love with him. Their kiss looked as if it was the most natural and beautiful thing on this earth. _And four years later, she still has it displayed_ he told himself smugly.

A second later his smugness vanished. Why did she still have it here? Was it always here, or because he had found her and she had set it out? Where had she gone? Why had she taken him to her apartment and not even left a note when she left? _She left you a note the last time she disappeared_ he warned himself. She hadn't disappeared again. Not with him inside her apartment.

He left the room of musicals and memories and walked back into the bedroom, grabbing the bottle of water she had left him off of the floor. _Fuck it_ he thought, trying to control his swaying emotions. _I'll stay here, covering up my boxers, until she gets back and tells me what's going on_ he thought.

He lay there in the bed for another thirty minutes waiting to hear her key in the lock. He wasn't sure if he should pretend to be asleep or if he should be awake and confront her right off the bat. He opted for the asleep act, as it would allow him to deny snooping in her apartment and would give her the opportunity to fill him in on what had happened last night without making him look like a fool.

When her key slid into the lock on the door, he put the water bottle down next to the bed and snuggled underneath the covers, waiting for her to come check on him. He listened to her rustle around in the kitchen, putting things away and arranging items in the fridge. He heard the clink of china and the tear of a cardboard box, but he had no idea what she was doing.

He listened to her move from the kitchen and into the hallway outside the bedroom door. He waited, wondering what was about to happen. He had no idea what world he was about to enter, or whether or not he was even ready for it. _Too late now_ he thought, and the doorknob began to turn.

He tried to keep his breathing even as she tip-toed into the room. He heard her lean down and check the trash can, the water bottle, the Motrin. He smelled coffee and something…_fantastic_ wafting from a plate in her hands. It was all he could do not to groan at the smells of food and caffeine. _Yes…._ he groaned to himself.

"Noah?" he heard her whisper his name and he tried not to die with happiness at the sound of it. It had been so long since she had called his name; it had been so long since she had been so close to him. He could feel the warmth emanating from her and he could smell her wonderful scent from where he lay, and he was unable to control himself any longer. _Act!_ he coached himself.

"Mmmm," he grumbled, and stirred slightly. He could feel her eyes on him, and he slowly rolled himself towards her and cracked an eye open at her. She was staring at him with such concern on her face and she looked breathtakingly beautiful.

"Rachel?" he asked, uncertainty and unsteadiness in his voice, alongside sleepiness and discombobulation.

"Oh!" she squeaked, and leaned away from the bed. "You're awake!"

"Yeeeah," he drew out the word, attempting to emerge from his feigned sleep by stretching and yawning.

"Oh! Well, I got you some breakfast," she said uncertainly. "I know you always used to like doughnuts in the mornings after long nights, so I went and got you fresh doughnuts and coffee," she said, glancing at him nervously.

"Rachel…" he said hesitantly, uncertain of how to phrase the question. He had to change the subject, though. She had always had doughnuts and coffee waiting the mornings after a game, or late-night when they were studying. On the first anniversary of Leah's death, they had sat up and eaten doughnuts and drunk coffee until 3am, talking. It hurt too much to think about.

"Rachel, why am I here?" he asked her.


	7. Am I Rough Enough?

**A/N: So sorry that it has taken me so long to post - I've been experiencing computer issues, and as my whole storyboard for this story was saved on this computer, I wasn't able to access it... I couldn't really do anything with that. I hope that this will make up for some of the lost time, and I've already begun working on the next chapter. Additionally, "Papa Don't Preach" was awesome this week! **

**Disclaimer: La la la I own nothing la la la.

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**She had awoken with a start. Noah Puckerman. Was here. In her apartment. In her bed. Oh. My. God. She had watched him sleep until she couldn't fend off sleep herself, but while she had been watching him she had watched the concern and pain drift out of his features; she had watched as his muscles relaxed and uncoiled. He looked so gentle laying there underneath her covers. He looked at home there – as if that was where he was meant to lay.

She looked at him again, drinking in the vision of him bathed in the morning sunlight. He looked at peace; his chest easily rising and falling, his mouth parted just slightly. She had waited for four years for him to come back into her life. She had waited four years for him to forgive her for leaving him in Lima. She couldn't believe that it had taken that long, but at the same time, she couldn't believe that he had actually been able to forgive her.

She was curled up on her chaise lounge watching him intently when he half-snorted in his sleep and twitched. She had a moment of panic – _he's awake, what do I say to him_ – before realizing that he was still asleep and she didn't have to worry about that yet.

She did have to worry about it, though, because he wasn't going to sleep forever. At some point he would wake up and he would have questions. She needed to provide him with real answers, not heat-of-the-moment answers. She needed to be able to ask him well thought-out questions, not anger-inspired questions. She needed to stop looking at him, because the rise and fall of his chest was mesmerizing her.

She dragged her gaze away from his body and looked around the room. It was her bedroom; the bedroom she had lived in ever since she had convinced her fathers that dorm life wasn't the best choice for her. They had supported her decision, and as long as she paid all of her bills and provided her own spending money, they footed the rent bill every month.

She had lived in the apartment for three years, but she had never felt at home there. She had always felt as if something was missing from the apartment, but she couldn't put her finger on what it was. She had decorated and redecorated, searching for the perfect combination of light and dark, sophisticated and feminine. The end result had her apartment looking like a model home, and she felt almost uncomfortable being in it –except for one room.

The movie room, she called it, but it was more than just a movie room. It held her movies and her projector, but it also held all of her music, her scores, her reading material. It was the only room painted in her signature Rachel Berry pink, and the only room that felt personal to her.

When she had been decorating the room she had striven to create a room in which she could feel comfortable with herself and at peace. She had thought long and hard about what had made her the happiest; when she had felt the most like herself. The answer was clear, it was easy, but she hadn't been sure she wanted to go that route. She didn't want to keep holding onto the past. If she was living in the past, she would never be able to move forward.

Eventually, she had given in and put up all of her pictures of Paris and pictures of her friends. She had filled a lot of photograph albums with pictures from her sophomore, junior, and senior years of high school, and she had selected the very best of these to display in this room. The most important picture she kept on the end table next to the sofa.

The sofa was a warm, chocolate brown and it was soft and amazingly comfortable. She felt so at peace in this room that she often wound up sleeping on the sofa instead of in her own bed. Every night that she fell asleep in this room she fell asleep staring at the picture of the kiss they had shared at the end of "Break Free."

She had barely been able to contain herself – her emotions had been running so high, the adrenaline had been pumping through her so hard, that when they were being called forward for another curtain call, she hadn't been able to stop. She had needed to kiss him; she had _needed_ to tell him how happy she was. She had needed to tell him how proud of him she was; how much she loved him. She put everything that she couldn't verbalize into that kiss.

That kiss had been burned into her memory and as she stared at the picture of them, night after night, she wondered how she had ever been able to turn her back on him and walk away. She had been foolish and headstrong. She had been a teenager and she had determined that she was right, and that this had been the only course of action that would lead her to be a star. The star she had worked her whole life to be.

_Yeah, some star_ she thought to herself as she tried to get out of the chair as quietly as possible. Stardom and friendship had eluded her at Julliard, and they were eluding her in the real world as well. She still had her dads, Kurt, Quinn, and Finn, but she didn't have anyone, or anything else. When she attended open mike nights, the crowd would roar appreciatively whenever she sang, but the moment she stepped from the stage it was as if she had vanished from the room. No one ever bought her a drink. She had once stood at a bar for 20 minutes trying to get the attention of the barman when he had finally come over to her.

"What would you like?" the guy had asked her. She had opened her mouth to place her order but before she could speak, he had started up again.

"Did you see that last girl up on stage? Man, she can sing! It's surprising she hasn't been signed yet, you know?" he said, making polite conversation.

"Thank-you," she had replied, blushing at the compliment.

"What?" he had asked her, confused.

"Thank-you for the compliment," she had clarified for him.

"Have you sung yet?" he asked her, and she felt the blush recede and her eyes begin to water.

"No," she whispered, and turned and walked away from the bar.

She had tried not to let it get to her, but of course it had. It was just another event in a very long list of things that hadn't turned out the way she had hoped. So was her life.

She had managed to remove herself from the chair without making much noise. Quietly she fluffed the pillows and cushions and crept from the room. She pulled the door partly closed behind her, and then went into the living room.

_What is he going to think when he sees this place_ she wondered, gazing at her museum of furniture and tasteful décor. Right, because that was the important thing here. Wondering about what he was going to think of her home. Sure. _Focus Berry! _she berated herself.

He had been absolutely wasted when she had brought him home the night before, which meant that he was probably going to have a wicked-nasty hangover when he finally emerged from sleep. Having not experienced a single hangover in her life (she had no one to go out and get drunk with) she was unsure of what his needs would be. Panicking, she grabbed her cell phone out of her purse on the coffee table and hit speed dial six.

"Darling, how fabulous to hear from you!" the voice on the other end of the line exclaimed. "How has my Broadway Baby been doing?"

"Kurt, I don't have a lot of time right now, and I can't be very loud, but I need to know what to do when someone has a hangover!" the words rushed out of her.

"Whoa, slow down sweetie. First of all, you don't hangover (obvi) so you must need this for someone _else_ which means that you have managed to procure a _man_, (or a friend)" he added hesitantly, "at long last. But I'd rather it be a _man_ than a friend."

"Kurt! Focus!" she interrupted him.

"Second" he continued as if he hadn't heard her, "if you're worrying about what _you_ need to do for someone with a hangover, that means that you aren't somewhere where you can cut-and-run before the hangover starts playing, which means you _must_ be in your apartamento." Rachel growled at him in frustration, but he paid her no mind.

"Third, if you have a man in your apartment in need of a hangover remedy, that means that you went somewhere last night and picked someone up and brought them back to your apartment, drunk, which _means_" he emphasized and paused while drawing in a big breath, "you had _sex!_" At this, he squealed with delight.

"Kurt. I did not have sex with anyone. I did not "hook up" with anyone. I don't have time to talk about it right now, but I really need to know what to do for a person who has a hangover. Like, right now." Her tone was forceful, and her sternness forced him to stop giggling.

"Fine, diva-tastic, spoil my fun. There are 6, possibly 7, important steps involved with dealing with a hangover. First, you must provide an empty trashcan, because this person might get sick, and might _not_ make it to the toilet before hurling. Imagine that on your floors." Rachel shivered. She loved him, but she did not want the first interaction they had to be one of her wiping his puke from the floor as he watched.

"Second, you must provide water. Lots of alcohol equals massive dehydration, and one's brain will feel shrink-wrapped until they rehydrate. Also, they will probably have a crazy cottonmouth thing going on, which needs to be cleared out. Stat." As he was directing her, she was rummaging through her kitchen, pulling out a plastic bag from the bundle under the sink and grabbing a cold liter of SmartWater from the fridge.

"Third, you must provide painkillers. Very important, these painkillers are, because a hangover feels like someone has driven a dump truck over your body and through your brain. That kind of thing must be resolved quickly, otherwise the other steps won't be as effective," he directed her.

"Does it matter what kind?" she asked, hoping she had the right brand.

"Not really, but I prefer ibuprofen over acetaminophen, and nothing candy coated. The coating will make it stick to your dry-ass tongue and start dissolving, which will make you want to hurl." _Motrin it is_ she thought, running to the bathroom.

"Fourth, you must provide caffeine. Caffeine helps spread the painkillers through your system and also provides energy to actually get out of bed and move onto the next few steps. I know you don't have any coffee there in that apartment, Berry, so you'd better run out and get some for your sex-toy," he teased her. When she growled into the phone he moved onto the next step.

"Fifth, you need food. Not that bird-food you have there at the apartment, but _food_. The greasier, the better, normally. So get that when you go out," he continued.

"Sixth, the hungover person will need to use the bathroom. Whether it's a number one or a number two or both, bathroom use is very important to starting the healing process." _TMI_ she thought.

"Seventh, and this is only a possibility because I don't know how long you wish to keep your new friend around, the hungover person will need to take a shower. Whether he takes it there, or elsewhere, is up to you, but showers normally make people start feeling human again a lot faster than just waiting for the awful to pass. So make up your mind about that last one, and you should be all set, sweetie," he concluded.

"Thanks Kurt, I appreciate it," she said as she arranged put the plastic bag into the bathroom trashcan and gathered the water bottle and Motrin off of the counter.

"Anytime, darling," he told her, and then continued, "but you so owe me details as soon as you have the situation under control. I expect another phone call within the next few hours, or I am going to get on a plane to the big apple and kick your Berry ass, understood?" he threatened her.

"Deal," she replied, and then clicked off the phone. She tip-toed as silently as she could back into the room and gently set the items down next to the edge of the bed. She arranged them neatly and within what she hoped was good grabbing distance from the bed, and then paused to look at him once more.

A lump rose in her throat and she turned and exited the room as quietly as she could manage. She closed the door behind her, gently letting the door handle click back into its resting position, and then moved swiftly to the coffee table and grabbed her purse. She grabbed her shoes from the night before and walked silently to the door.

After she had locked the apartment door behind her she pulled on her shoes and leaned against the doorframe. Should she leave a note? He might wake up while she was gone, and she didn't want him to worry that she had left him again. _Don't be stupid_ she scolded herself. If he wakes up and you're gone, he knows you have to come back because it's _your_ apartment. You kind of live there.

She steeled her nerves and pushed herself away from the door and walked (okay, half-strutted) to the elevator. The doors closed in front of her and she leaned against the back wall of the elevator cab and tried to figure out what kind of greasy food and caffeine Noah would enjoy. It had been so long since she had kept track of his preferences…she knew nothing about who he was, what he liked, or how to take care of him anymore.

A wave of sadness washed over her, but she tried to banish it with an upsurge of hope. No, she might not know all of those things about him _now_, but that he was asleep in her apartment was testament to the fact that she _could_ know all of those things about him once again. In fact, he probably hadn't changed his go-to food and caffeine choices in four years. She could probably get him what she had gotten him after long nights of talking or bad dreams… what she had brought him every Saturday morning after a football game. She would get him coffee and fresh doughnuts.

She strutted out of the elevator and hurried down the sidewalks to the closest Krispy Kreme location. She knew that he loved their fresh-from-the-oven plain cake doughnuts with their sugary glaze. The first anniversary of Leah's death they had stayed up talking all night long eating Krispy Kreme's and drinking coffee. Rachel had drunk hers halfway full with milk while Noah had stirred enough sugar into it to make the spoon stand straight up. They had laughed and they had cried and they had made a memory that was permanently etched into Rachel's brain.

She bought the doughnuts and made a quick stop off at the Starbucks a block from her apartment. Armed with 2 Venti Sumatra's (doctored appropriately), a box of fresh Krispy Kreme doughnuts, and various other sundries, she made her way back into her apartment building and to the outside of her apartment door.

She listened for a moment at the doorway, trying to hear if he was awake and moving around. The elevator door dinged behind her, and she realized she couldn't hear anything at all. Whether or not that meant he was still asleep and was not moving around her apartment or that he was running around her apartment freaking out and she just couldn't hear him, she decided to bite the bullet and put her key into the first lock.

She undid the rest of the locks and carefully opened the front door, almost afraid to look to see if he was awake yet. There was no movement in the room, so she pushed the door shut behind her and locked the door.

She moved directly to the kitchen, not pausing to see if the bathroom light was on or the bedroom door was ajar. She put away the items that she had bought and ripped open the box of doughnuts, placing one on a plate for him.

She grabbed his coffee in one hand and the plate in the other and moved determinedly towards his door. _Just check on him_ she told herself, convincing herself that he wasn't awake and that they wouldn't have to talk about everything yet.

She took in a deep, steadying breath and turned the door handle. When she opened the door she could see that he was sleeping, but she decided to check the water and other items to make sure he hadn't woken up alone. When she saw that the water bottle was only half full, her heart leapt into her chest and she began to panic.

Why had he gone back to sleep? Did he know where he was? Did he think that she abandoned him again? Was he worried or upset of angry? What was going on?

"Noah?" she whispered, trying to discover whether or not he was sleeping sleeping, or just pretending to sleep.

She heard him make his wake-up noise and she watched as he shifted and stretched in the bed. Was he waking up, or had she just disturbed his slumber? She worried for a moment and then she saw his eye begin to open and she knew that this was it; that her moments for thinking and planning were over – she was about to speak to Noah for the first time in four very long years.

"Rachel?" she heard him ask, and the sound of his voice speaking her name nearly drove her to the brink of tears. He looked confused and sounded uncertain about where he was and why.

"Oh!" she squeaked, and leaned away from the bed. "You're awake!"

"Yeeeah," he yawned and stretch-squirmed in her bed.

"Oh! Well, I got you some breakfast," she said uncertainly. "I know you always used to like doughnuts in the mornings after long nights, so I went and got you fresh doughnuts and coffee," she said, glancing at him nervously. She didn't want to make him think of the other implications of coffee and doughnuts. She didn't want him to shove the coffee back in her face or throw the doughnut at the wall. She _really_ didn't want to agitate whatever type of hangover he had. She really hoped he still loved her.

She waited, breath baited as he processed what she had said. She could tell that it took a lot of effort on his part to put things together.

"Rachel…" he began and then trailed off, looking at her concernedly. She wasn't sure what he was concerned about – he couldn't really want to start talking about everything when he was only 60 seconds out of sleep mode, could he?

"Rachel, why am I here?" he asked her, and her heart plummeted into her stomach.

_Why was he here? _How could he not know why he was here?

"Noah… we ran into each other a bar last night. You were talking to a girl who said my name, and when I turned around, you were right there. You were very drunk, though, and needed to go home before you got sick. I didn't know where you lived, but my apartment was close, so I brought you here…" she said unsteadily.

"Where are my clothes?" he asked, a note of harshness in his voice. She flinched at the tone – he had only spoken to her harshly once or twice in their whole relationship. His tone reminded her of Puck, the boy who used to torment her in her early years of high school.

"You had gotten sick on them last night, so I put them in the wash when I got up this morning…they must be ready to go into the dryer by now…" she was still unsure of where this was heading, of how it was going.

"Oh," was his only response. They sat there and stared at each other for a moment before Noah closed his eyes and asked her the hardest question in the world:

"Rachel, why did you leave me?"


	8. Am I Rich Enough?

**A/N: So, I'm not sure how I missed this until just now, but I am appalled that after episodes 12 and 13, there won't be another new episode of Glee until April 13th. What? What are we supposed to do with no new Glee for 4 months? WTF? **

**Disclaimer: You know how this works.

* * *

**He wasn't sure if he was a convincing actor. His movements, his breathing, his words… he wasn't sure they were truthful enough to convey that he had been asleep; that he was confused; that he didn't have a clue what was going on. He wanted to make her respond to him. He wanted to make her answer him.

In truth, he didn't know how he had ended up in her apartment. The explanation she offered seemed logical enough but he didn't remember anything after going to the bar and arguing with the girl who had bought him a drink. What had she bought him? A Mind Eraser. _Guess they call it a Mind Eraser for a reason_ he thought as he waited for Rachel to answer his question.

The entire time he had been searching through her apartment, he had been planning out what he was going to say to her, and what questions he was going to ask of her. As hungover as he was, he was humming with excitement about the path this situation would lead him down.

He supposed his excitement had gotten the better of him, and rather than thank Rachel for taking care of him, for getting him to a bed, for washing his clothes, for getting him food and drunk-over aids, he just wanted to know the truth. The questions and the thirst for truth burned inside of him… for four years he had been unable to comprehend her actions, and for four years he had waited for the moment when she finally answered his questions.

"Rachel, why did you leave me?" he asked her plainly, bluntly, baldly. This was not the time for skirting around an issue. Yes, his head felt like someone had turned his brain into a jumble of rocks, but that was not important. What was important was her answer.

He watched her as she considered her reply. She was so beautiful – the past four years had been good to her. Where she had once been a beautiful high-schooler, she was now a gorgeous adult. Where she had been a girl, she was now a woman. Everything about her screamed composure and stardom, and he felt himself begin to sink into her, appreciating everything about her. The way her silky dark hair framed her face. The way her forehead wrinkled just slightly when she was concentrating on what to say. The familiar warmth of her brown eyes. The way her body looked so light, so small… he wanted to protect her and devour her in the same breath.

He watched her as she deliberated over what to say. She took a deep breath and seemed to steel herself against harsh words; harsh news.

"I left you because I loved you too much," she finally whispered, and he felt the anger flare inside of him.

"You _left_ the person you _loved_ without a good-bye, without a single word for four years, because you loved them too _much? _he inquired, his tone creeping towards harsh; towards Puck.

"Yes," she whispered, her eyes downcast.

"Let me tell you something, Rachel Berry," he began, his voice tight. "If you really love someone you're not able to dump them and just leave them sitting there in the dust. It doesn't happen. That whole bullshit statement about how if you love someone, you should "set them free and see if they come back to you" is ridiculous." He was glad he was still in bed, hiding himself from her, but at the same time he wanted to be pacing the room, he wanted to be screaming and yelling. Instead he was quiet.

"I left you because I was scared, Noah, what else do you think? I was barely 18 when you proposed to me – I didn't want to become a high school bride, and you knew it! We had talked about it before graduation even neared. I loved you more than anything on this earth, and I was afraid of giving up my dreams because of my love for you," the words rushed out of her.

"I didn't want to give up everything I'd worked for, and it felt like that idea made the most sense. I could distance myself from you, and keep working for my dream. And that dream has kept me going for four straight years," she concluded acerbically.

"And how has that turned out for you – the whole leaving me behind in the dust to become a big star thing? Are you a star? Was it worth it?" he could feel his anger begin to pump into overdrive, and he knew that as soon as he hit a certain mark, it would be the Puck show, not the Noah show that Rachel was experiencing. He struggled to reign himself in.

"It hasn't," she whispered. He wasn't used to a Rachel who whispered – the Rachel he had fallen in love with was strong and confident. She would never let a quiver work its' way into her voice. She would never let tears sting her eyes unless they were true. His heart twisted at the sight of her tears, but he forced himself to go on. He had cried too much over her.

"Why did you lead me on? Why didn't you just say no at graduation?" he asked her, the words twisting bitterly out of his mouth. That was something he still couldn't understand. He had attempted, over the years, to understand what had made her say yes, and then change her mind to no. He had wondered what had made her want to placate him on the stage and then break his heart (and his reputation) in front of the entirety of the graduating class. He couldn't come up with an answer.

"I told you, Noah," she began, but the plaintiveness in her voice caused him to snap at her.

"No, you didn't! You gave me some bullshit reason about not wanting to hurt me, but if you hadn't wanted to hurt me, you wouldn't have done what you did," he was breathing now in hard, panting breaths.

"It's true!" she wailed, and he wanted to comfort her but held himself steady.

"No, it's not," he replied sadly. "It couldn't be true. When I got my rejection and acceptance letters back, I thought everyday about where you would go; where I could be near you; how we could make a life together. I had known that you were supposed to be with me from the first moment you let me crush your hand in the waiting room after Quinn spotted at school that day."

"I had known that I could never love someone the way that I loved you ever again the entire time we were together- despite our personalities we made it work because of a vested interest in each other…and not just because we had amazing sex," he concluded, trying to lighten the situation and get a handle on the Puck that was inside of him, itching for release. She didn't go for it.

"Yes, we did have amazing sex, but was that all it was to you? Is that why you proposed? Is that why, after four years of silence, you've finally come to find me? Because you miss the really great sex?" she asked indignantly.

"Are you dumb? Have you gone stupid in four years? Really? To believe that I would _ever_ think something like that about you? Sure, the old Puck would have banged you and moved on, but I thought that the nearly three years we spent together would have taught you something about that. I guess not. I guess you didn't care. I guess you didn't see how much loving you had changed me," he retorted.

"I thought it had! And then you show up in New York and you're drunk and I take care of you, and the first things you say to me are not 'I missed you,' or 'thanks for taking care of me,' but are instead the original questions from the Spanish Inquisition with some sex banter thrown in for good measure!" He could tell she was pissed and having trouble controlling her temper. For that matter, he was having trouble controlling his.

"The sex stuff was just a joke, to try to lighten the mood," he tried to calm himself. "It was never about sex. I would have waited as long as you asked me to before we ever broached that subject. I loved you; I _still_ love you, and I would have waited my entire lifetime if that was what it meant to be with you. Just tell me what I did, Rachel. Tell me why I made you stop loving me…" he couldn't believe he had asked her that. He was a guy. He had more balls than that. Or not.

"You didn't do anything," she began, and red-hot anger seared through him.

"I must have!" he yelled at her. "Otherwise you wouldn't have left me. You wouldn't have forgotten about me for four years and never called, never stopped by my mom's house when you came home to visit. And I know you came home to visit!" he continued hotly.

"Whenever I knew you were in town, I would drive over to your house and sit in driveway, waiting for you to realize that I was waiting there for you. I would be in the same building as you (the grocery store, the mall) and I would wait for the moment when you would see me, and I could figure this all out. I never gave up hope; but you never came back to me!" He wasn't sure what else to say. He had given her everything he had inside of him, and it still wasn't enough.

"I was afraid," she whispered, and again he felt the burn against this whispering Rachel – who was she, and what had the past four years done to her?

"You were afraid?" he asked, his emotions getting the better of him. "_You_ were afraid? I'm sorry, did you have your heart trampled on in front of your entire graduating class, and then have to come home the next afternoon and explain to your mother and little sister that your supposed fiancé had ditched you without even saying good-bye? _You_ were afraid?" He was seething now, his breath hissing through his teeth and clenched jaw.

"I battled all of my fears – rejection, idiocy, etcetera, to come to your house. To beg you to forgive me for placing you in such an awkward position, Rachel. I realized what had happened, and how I should have handled it, and I came to apologize and make things right. But you, _you, _you couldn't even stick around to hear it. You didn't have enough faith in me to realize that I would come around, that I would understand that they were your dreams and that I should support you in them. Instead…you left. Without a good-bye. All I got was a single fucking letter and not a single phone call. Not a kiss good-bye. Not a promise of a future. Nothing." He was livid; pouring out the pain and rejection that had plagued him for years.

"I'm sorry," she said quietly.

"Sorry's not good enough!" he shouted at her, losing control of his temper. "Sorry would have been okay the morning after. Sorry would have been okay two weeks, a month, two months down the line. I would have forgiven you without ever questioning you. I would have, and you know it. Instead…you let four years go by. Why didn't you ever call? Why didn't you ever write? Why…" he trailed off.

He was remember the one time he had been convinced he had seen her. It was in early March, around when colleges started letting classes out for spring break. He had been dragged to the mall by his sister, who needed to buy a birthday present for a friend. He had been inside the J. Crew store (wanting to kill himself) when he had seen a familiar flash of brown hair; a tiny little body entering the store.

He had played the ninja, sweeping silently through the store trying to figure out whether or not it was her. He had done the entire perimeter when he saw a pair of warm brown eyes lock on his. Someone was shutting the door to the dressing room, and he could have sworn he saw the eyes widen in shock and recognition before the door clicked into place.

"Was that you, that day, at the J. Crew?" he asked her.

"Yes," she replied, though she seemed reluctant to do so.

"You recognized me. You saw me. Why didn't you come talk to me? Why didn't you say anything?" He had had harbored the hope that it was her, and the hope that it wasn't her, ever since.

"You looked….busy," she struggled with the words. "And I didn't know what to say to you. I didn't know how to apologize… I didn't know if you were able to forgive me. I still hadn't heard from you…" she trailed off.

"Right, you hadn't heard from me. You leave me a letter telling me to call you when I feel able to forgive you for dumping me in the dirt and expect me to call? Rachel, I had _asked you to marry me_ and you had said yes before leaving me in the lurch. Why on earth would I just call you? So that you could pretend everything was okay and then leave me again? No. I wasn't going to let that happen. I had a plan, and the plan would get me to where I needed to be – and so it has. I'm here," he continued stoically.

"You're here," she sighed, and seemed reluctant to ask her next question. "What did you do? What was your plan?"

"I needed to make myself better, Rachel. I knew that was why you really ran – you were afraid I wouldn't support you; that I was not going to be able to support your dreams. I knew that I didn't have any money and that I couldn't give you the lifestyle that you were accustomed to; that you deserved. I knew I wasn't good enough," he said roughly.

"Not good enough?" she screeched. "You were and _are_ everything to me! I was almost able to give up everything I'd worked my whole life for to be with you. I was going to defer from college and marry you. I wanted to live with you and love you and be with you always – and that scared me. I had spent 18 years building and working towards one dream. One dream that always made the slushies and the taunting and the rude comments worth it, and I was almost ready to give it all away. And that scared me… I felt like I was ready to give myself away to be with you, and that felt wrong." Her forehead was furrowed as she spoke, and he itched to smooth the lines from her face.

"You still left. You didn't come back. You didn't call; you didn't write. You left me alone, Rachel, with only one letter of excuse. No further contact. You became my sperm donor all over again. Just a small good-bye, and then nothing. It was almost as if he had never existed, and you went out of your way to put yourself in the same boat," he continued, his voice aching with melancholy.

"I told you why I left, and you know now, more than ever why I left. And I told you not to think of me as your father because you knew that somewhere out there, I was sitting by the phone, waiting for your call. Anytime I was in my apartment I was waiting with baited breath, hoping you would knock on my door. I put the ball in your court, and you dropped it!" she responded angrily.

"I never dropped anything. It took me a long time to get everything going again. It took me a long time to be able to somewhat understand what you had done and forgive your actions. I _still_ haven't entirely forgiven you, but what these past four years have proven to me is that I can't live without you. I can't love without you. I don't know how to truly _be_ without you. I've lost track of myself, and who I want to be. The only thought that plagues me, night after night, day after day, is whether or not I could be who you wanted me to bed. I wanted (and have always wanted) to be yours. I have always wanted to live up to your expectations. And busting me down in front of the entire graduating class? Not the best way to prove that I could do that," he seethed.

He gazed at her as she registered the pain and anger in his voice and her face transformed into one of shock.

"But let me tell you one thing," he paused. "I've learned a lot in the past four years. I've learned how to graduate from college. I've learned how to be a hard worker. I've learned how to be Noah; the Noah you deserve. But I've also learned that despite all of the changes I've made with you in mind, it doesn't matter whether or not you think I'm good enough for you. Because I am. And four years later I'm still here. And I still love you. And I am the best thing that could happen to you – because we're meant to be together."

He sighed and ran his hand through his hair before saying the final words:

"Because after all of this time, I still love you."

.


	9. I'm Not too Blind to See

**A/N: Sorry that it has been so long between posts. I had finals, and I was finally officially diagnosed with what's been wrong with me for the past few months, so these past few weeks have been interesting. I do not plan on making a habit of going so long between posts. I hope this makes up (a little) for the lost time. I've already started work on the next chapter, so hopefully that should be up tomorrow. **

**Also, "Sectionals" was absolutely fabulous. I've already watched it 3 times (gotta love the DVR), but I can't believe it's four more months until the new episode. So sad!**

**Disclaimer: I own Glee Volumes 1 and 2. (Seriously, no "Papa, Don't Preach?" Really?)

* * *

**She felt literally torn apart: part of her was vibrating with anger, she was so mad at him. The other part of her felt like she needed to crawl into a hole and die because of what she had put him through.

In the four years since she had driven away from her fathers' doorway leaving nothing but a letter behind, she had envisioned this moment a million times. She had played out different scenarios over and over again, trying to determine whether or not what she had done was fixable. Forgivable.

Maybe it wasn't. It had taken him four years to get up the courage to come and find her; to attempt to contact her. But he had still come. He was here, in front of her, now. He had just told her that he loved her…wait. He had told her that he loved her. It wasn't that easy. It couldn't be that easy. Noah Puckerman would _never_ give in that easily.

"What do you mean you love me?" she asked, her voice raising. The shocked expression on his face showed her that she had phrased her question wrong.

"I mean, you love me, just like that? We fight for all of 10 minutes and all of a sudden everything's forgiven and we're declaring ourselves? That isn't right!" she could feel herself growing irritated.

"Why isn't it right? I figured that would be what you wanted," he spluttered.

"No! I want something real – something that you _have_ to fight for; that you _need_ to fight for. Something that works its way into your bones and makes you scream and shout and say ridiculous things to protect it, and to protect yourself from it," she said as she felt the fire of conviction burn through her.

"If you give in too easily, if you give up too easily, it shows that it doesn't really matter; it's not worth fighting for. It shows you don't really care" she continued, until Noah cut her off abruptly.

"What the FUCK, Rachel? You want me to get mad? You want me to let it all out? You want me to tell you exactly how I feel about you, everything that I've felt about you for the last four years? Really? Is that what you want me to say right now?" He threw back the covers and got out of the bed, standing to tower over her.

"Yes," she whispered, trying not to notice his bare skin.

"Just remember, you asked for it," he said, and she tensed as if trying to protect herself from the onslaught she knew was coming. She knew it was going to be awful; brutal, but she knew that he needed to get it out, otherwise he would hold it against her for the rest of his life and their relationship would never be whole.

"You were a fucking BITCH to do to me what you did. You had changed me; I had changed FOR YOU and to show you just how much I cared about you and how much faith I had in us, I asked you to marry me. You said yes, more or less. You told my mother, and my baby sister who adored you, that you were going to be their family. And then…" he growled, pacing in front her.

"And then you made me look like a complete IDIOT in front of everyone we knew – everyone who I would be going to school with, and would see every day. Who would remind me EVERY DAY that I was the world's biggest dumbass Lima Loser who actually got dumped by Rachel Berry before she split to make it big," he spat the words at her. She couldn't help but notice how beautiful he was in his anger – he looked like an angry cat; feline and lethal.

"You fought me and fought me and wouldn't let me try to work it out with you that night. You kissed me and promised me with your kiss that everything would be okay, we just needed a night of space. And then when I didn't hear from you the next day, I figured you were waiting for me to act, for me to man-up… and I drove over to your house and collapsed in your foyer when your dads told me you were gone. It felt as if Leah had died again, as if my father had walked out the door for the last time, it felt like Quinn leaving and burying my daughter and having to tell my mom that she wouldn't be a grandmother all over again, all wrapped up into this neat little package that sucker-punched me in the face!" he exclaimed.

"You left _me_ to deal with the fallout, while you ran to Quinn and Finn, the two experts at running away from their problems. I had to tell my mom and my sister that there wasn't any need to get excited over wedding plans, because there would be no wedding. I had to watch my mother's face as it crumpled when she read your letter to her, and I had to watch my sister run from the room crying because she felt she wasn't good enough to be your sister – and that that's why you had left me. Because _she_ wasn't good enough family for _you_."

His words chilled her, and while she had been trying to fight the tears they were now flowing freely down her face. She let them. She knew she deserved this.

"And on top of all of that, I had to deal with my own pain, my own questions. And I wanted to drop everything, I wanted to revert back to who I had been before you changed me, but I couldn't. It was permanent, and it made me hate you even more, that I couldn't undo what you did to me, just like I couldn't undo how you hurt me, or how you left me. I hated everything about myself for a long time, and I questioned everything I was working towards, everything I had become, and then I made myself stop with the questions. Because you know what?" he paused and sucked in a huge breath.

"I realized it wasn't _my_ fault. It was yours. I might have played a part in it, but it was your fault the way things had ended, and why they had ended that way. Explanations dotted with teardrops don't make up for what you did, they don't make it better. They don't make you stronger. Your actions didn't make you a better person. You know what they did? They showed that not only are you a cold-hearted bitch, but you're a coward."

The words stung her as if he had slapped her across the face. She had been taking in his anger, letting it flow from him and seep into her without question, but that remark had hurt almost too much. She knew he was nearing his finishing point, and she tried to hold herself together, to keep silent until the end so that he could get it all out.

"You ran away, and I'll never fully forgive you for that. It showed you had no faith in me. It showed you had no faith in us, after everything our relationship had suffered, you didn't think it was enough. You showed me we weren't worth it. _I_ wasn't worth it," the words were slipping through his clenched teeth. He had paused in his pacing and was staring down at her.

"You showed me you were weak. That you weren't worthy of _me_; not that I wasn't worthy of you. Because I wouldn't have left you – I would have worked it out with you. I would have put my pride on the line to save what we had. But you left me without even trying to make it better, which meant that you weren't good enough for me. Because a real woman talks it out and tries to make it work. She doesn't run away. And I want a real woman in my life, not a little girl pretending to be one." With that, he sat back down on the edge of the bed, not bothering to throw the covers back over himself.

Rachel took her cue. "Yes, I ran away. Yes, I was a coward and weak and afraid. But I felt like I didn't deserve your love, Noah. I didn't think that I could ever be the woman who was worthy of spending her life with you. You always looked at me as if I was perfect, and your satisfaction with yourself was sometimes so smug I felt like you were going to choke on it." She forced herself not to look at him.

"I was stupid. I was a teenage girl, and that is exactly my point. I was a teenaged girl – I was nowhere near being any sort of ready to get married – I needed to become an adult first, before I could handle that sort of responsibility. Because once I committed to you, I would be in it for keeps. I wouldn't ever have wanted to lose you. I would have given my dreams away for you…" she was hesitating now.

"I feel like I'm talking in circles, and that I'm not getting anywhere with this. There's so much that I want to say to you, so much that I feel I need to say to you, and I can't get it out. I almost can't make myself say it. I know I have to, but I'm afraid it will hurt you more," she paused.

"Just do it. Whatever it is, it can't hurt worse than what you did four years ago. Unless you married Finn. Don't tell me you married Finn," he attempted theatrically, but she could see the tightening of his eyes and his clenching fists.

"You told me how the last four years were for you – let me tell you about how they were for me. I left my fathers standing in the driveway knowing I was doing the wrong thing. Knowing I was doing the right thing. I went to Quinn and Finn and waited there for you all summer long, waited for you to come and claim me, but you didn't show. I had thought you would see right through me and come to talk me out of my craziness, like you always did, and when you didn't, (even though I know it was stupid and petty to think so, in light of what I had just done) it made me feel like you didn't love me. So I hid. I hid for four years," she drew in a shaky breath.

"I made no friends. I did "well" in my classes, but I wasn't ever able to break through to anyone. I wasn't phenomenal, I was just another fish in the bowl. Pea in the pod. Whatever," she was flustered now.

"I had no one, and I wanted you to come, but I knew you weren't going to. I was waiting for you, even though I knew that your ETA was never. I tried to make myself get past you, but there was no getting past you. I tried dating this one guy who lived on my floor, but when he tried to kiss me I ran away. I was still waiting for you…" now she looked down nervously at her hands instead of meeting his eyes.

"I was depressed, and I knew that I had to make myself move forward. I just couldn't bring myself to do it with anyone who would possibly want something from me – I didn't want to have to give any of myself to someone else, because I was saving it for you. So when a professor started making advances towards me, I…accepted them. I slept with him. Because for a moment I could close my eyes and pretend that he was you, and that you'd come back to me. I could remember what it was like to be with you, because you were the only person who I had ever let touch me like that." She stopped talking, and her words hung in the air.

"I'm sorry that I gave up when we were 18. I'm sorry that I gave up when I was 20. I'm not sorry that I broke it off with my professor because I knew he was never going to be you, and there was no use fooling myself. I'm sorry that I'm dumb and stupid and that I was immature and cowardly and I'm sorry… I'm sorry that I left. I feel like such a bad Jew," she said, attempting to make him smile.

"But I'm not sorry that you're here. I've waited four years for you to forgive me, and even if you haven't yet, I will wait as long as I have to. I will give anything for you to forgive me. I would give anything to keep you in my life. I need you. I love you. I never, ever, not for one second, stopped loving you. Please, please," she began to cry, and got down on her knees in front of him.

"Please, please forgive me. Please try to love me again. I know I don't deserve a second chance, but I am begging you for one. My life isn't complete without you. My heart isn't complete without you. Please, give me a second chance," she pleaded with him.

She watched his eyes, but they betrayed none of his emotion. She watched him in silence until his arms moved forward and cupped her armpits and pulled her up, placing her back in the chair. She watched as he withdrew his hands quickly from her body, as if her skin had burned him.

She watched him in silence, begging him with her eyes. She knew that she had been foolish, and that he was unlikely to give her another chance. She knew that she had been the one at fault four years ago, and that she deserved the loneliness she had lived since that point in her life. Part of her felt angry for having to apologize, but it was a small part. She had finally had the lightbulb moment and realized what she had done to the people she loved. To the person that she loved most. Now all she could do was wait.

She waited a few moments before shifting slightly as if to stand from the chair. Swiftly, Noah stood in front of her and placed his hand on her shoulder, slightly pressing her back towards the seat.

She felt impossibly small as he stood over her. His gaze pierced her and she saw all of the anger and pain he was feeling. She searched his eyes, hoping for some hint of forgiveness or possibility, but they were void.

Suddenly Noah dropped into a crouch in front of her, and she found herself unable to tear her gaze away from his. His eyes were boring into hers as if they were trying to read her mind and the power behind them made her uncomfortable.

She watched as his eyes traveled over her hair, her eyes, her nose, her lips, her throat, her neck, her chest, and finally her hands, clenched tightly in her lap. She broke her gaze from his eyes and looked down at her hands, willing them to unclench.

She felt hot breath on her ear and her eyes fluttered closed, caught up in the heat emanating from his body. He had moved forward while she had stared at her hands, and now he was so close that he was almost overpowering her with his proximity.

"Did you mean it?" he asked her, his voice low and sultry.

"M-m-m-mean wh-what?" she asked as she felt his face dip lower so that he could be closer to her throat. She heard him inhale and then shivered when he next spoke, his voice raising goosebumps on her skin as his breath tickled her throat.

"When you said you were sorry. When you said you loved me. All of it," he whispered towards her throat. He was so close to her that she was practically aching for him to make physical contact with her, but he kept just far enough away from her for that to happen.

"Yes," she breathed, and she felt him move around to the other side of her neck, inhaling her scent. He leaned closer to her, and she felt him run a few strands of her hair through his fingers.

"Can you forgive me?" she asked him, eyes still squeezed shut. There was a moment of silence, and then she felt his mouth move very close to her right earlobe. His breath was hot and wet on her skin and sent shivers down her spine.

"Not yet…" he paused, "but I want to."

She pulled back from him slightly and opened her eyes to find his hazely-green ones staring back at her. Her breath hitched in her throat and her eyes focused on his mouth. Across the room, her cell phone began to ring. At the same instant, the landline of the apartment began to ring as well.

She paid them no attention, letting them ring until they both cut off and went to voicemail. She was focusing very intently on his lips, watching as he flicked his tongue over them and pursed them slightly. She realized she was leaning towards him as a voice began to ring through her apartment.

"Ray-Ray, it's Daddy," she heard through the answering machine, and she knew from his tone of voice that something had happened. She broke from her gaze at Noah and whipped her head towards the door, towards the kitchen where they answering machine was recording. "Please, call me back as soon as you get this message. I need to talk to you," her fathers voice cracked, and then the line went dead.

She turned to stare at Noah, this time in panic. She jumped out of the chair and ran to her cell phone. She dialed her Daddy's speed dial number and waited for the line to connect. Her father answered on the second ring.

"Daddy, what's wrong?" she cried into the phone.

"Rachel, it's Dad, sweetie. He…" she listened as her father broke down in tears. She squeezed her eyes shut as she felt her heart spasm in pain. No. No. Not her father. Not her father. No.

"No!" she shouted out loud, and instantly, Noah was at her side, drawing her into his arms while she clutched the phone to her ear. It was if nothing had happened in the last four years – he was still there to protect her.

"Rachel, Dad had a heart attack. I'm at the hospital, but I can't see him. They're doing surgery – it's going to take a while, and they're not optimistic. Baby girl, you need to come home," her father told her, and she broke down in tears.

"I'm coming home, Daddy. I'll be on the first flight out. I'll be right there. I'm so sorry, Daddy. Tell Dad I'm coming. Tell him he has to fight for that blue ribbon, that gold star. He has to fight to stay here, okay? Tell him I love him. Tell him I'm coming," she babbled into the phone. She didn't really hear her father's response, she just closed the phone and buried her face into Noah's chest as she sobbed.

Abruptly she pulled away from him and ran to her closet to grab a suitcase. Frantically, she began throwing clothes into it, not bothering to color-coordinate or fold. She didn't stop crying the entire time she hunted through her apartment for the things she needed to take with her.

"Hey," she heard, and she felt Noah's hand slip around her wrist.

"Dad had a heart attack, I have to go home," she said, and tried to pull away from him so that she could finish packing.

"He's going to be okay, Rach. He will be. I know he will be. But, Rachel, I'm not letting you pack up and leave without me again. I'm coming with you," he said, and tugged her to him. "I'm coming with you."


	10. So Let's Go Home and Draw the Curtains

**A/N: I can't wait for "The Road to Sectionals" to come out. I am so excited about it, it's a little ridiculous. Please read and review!**

**Disclaimer: I own not a thing.

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**He had been hell-bent on keeping his anger inside of him. He knew it seemed like the pussy way out, but he had been over it and over it and had decided that he needed to do whatever it took to get back into her life, and that he would deal with all of the consequences of that later. He just needed to get the ball rolling. Where it rolled after that… that was an entirely different story.

She had gotten down on her knees and begged him. The idea of Rachel Berry begging had crossed his mind before when he had initially envisioned these confrontational moments, but actually seeing it happen was so much better than he could have imagined. He had her by the figurative balls… he could walk away, if he chose to. She was begging him. She was humiliating herself for him, because (as she had once told him) the act of begging was a supreme act of humiliation, and she would never humiliate herself in such away. The slushies and taunting in high school had done that enough. She would never debase herself by begging for anything. And yet…she was begging for him.

He didn't want to give in too easily; however. If he gave in too easily, he was a pussy, and Noah Puckerman was no pussy. That's what he had spent four years avoiding – the stigma of being the bitch that had gotten stood up by Rachel Berry, Queen Gleek.

Of course, at the time, she had been his Queen Gleek and her stigma had faded significantly until it was in the distant past. It hadn't mattered at all, until she had left town. Then… well, everyone at McKinley and in Lima who had known about Leah instantly sprang to his defense and had ridiculed her for months. He knew that was why she almost never left her fathers' house when she came home for vacations. Practically the entire town was defending him and siding with him.

As much as he loved the fact that she was begging him on her knees to have him take her back, he felt bad for leaving her there for so long. He knew how degrading she found the act, and so, in an act of mercy, he had pulled her back up onto the chair. And then he had decided to have a little fun.

He had noticed the way she had first looked at him, when she had seen him shirtless, when she had watched him wake up. He wondered how long she had looked at him the night before prior to falling asleep – or had she simply stayed up all night staring? It would be such a very Berry thing to do.

So he began to tease her, leaning close to her body so that she could feel his body heat on her skin. He kept just far enough away so that he wouldn't accidentally brush up against her, and he leaned in to breathe in her ear, smell her neck, smell her hair. She was intoxicating, and his drunkenness was one of the reasons why he had to make her speak. He had to find out if her words were true – the best way to do that was to get her to answer while she was distracted. She always told the truth when she was distracted; she couldn't think of any lie clever enough to tell.

He had finally decided to break his hold over her, and was leaning in to kiss her, to really, really kiss her, when the phone began to ring. He had hoped that she would ignore it, and was emboldened when she did. He needed to test the waters and see if they still had their physical compatibility. It had been so long since he had been with anyone, and while the idea of Rachel with _anyone_ but him made him want to throw up and punch holes in walls, he knew that he had been holding out for her, and that no matter what happened in the future, he needed to experience her again, at least one more time.

However the kiss went would dictate their future. If there was no spark, no passion, no love, he would finally be able to move on. He knew that she wouldn't be able to act her way through a kiss, not the kisses they used to share. If there was anything still left there, if she wasn't just lying and messing with his head, then her kiss would show that to him.

She was leaning towards him and he could smell her hair all around him and then the answering machine began to play, bringing the moment to a slamming halt. "Ray-Ray, it's Daddy," he heard. Having known her fathers for as long as he had, he knew from her father's voice that something had happened.

"Please, call me back as soon as you get this message. I need to talk to you," her father continued, and then the machine cut off and there was silence for a split second before Rachel pulled away from him and moved into action.

He was immobilized on the floor trying to comprehend what was going on. He was 22 years old. He was in Rachel Berry's apartment, crouched in front of a chair in his boxers, and he had been just about to kiss her. But his mind wasn't there. In his mind, he was back in his mother's house, feeling the world drop away as Finn told him about the car accident.

He snapped back to reality when he heard Rachel shout, "No!" into the phone, and his instincts, honed through three years of being with her, reacted instantaneously. He moved to her automatically and pulled her towards him, sheltering her in his arms. He didn't even pause to think about how it felt to finally hold her again after all of these years. Instead, he simply felt the pain moving through her and the hot wetness of her tears on his skin.

He listened to her tell her father that she was coming home, and he felt his brain stutter to a halt. He felt like he had temporarily separated his mind from his body – his body was still standing there alert as Rachel pulled away from him and began rummaging through her closet, but his mind was watching the whole thing from up-above, while split-screening what he had imagined she had looked like packing when she left four years ago. His heart spasmed at the thought.

She was racing through the apartment grabbing random objects, and he knew that she was reacting to her fear and letting her anxiety overwhelm her. She needed him to be calm for her, to be there for her.

"Hey," he said as he slipped his hand around her wrist, gently halting her.

"Dad had a heart attack, I have to go home," she said, and tried to pull away from him so that she could finish packing.

"He's going to be okay, Rach. He will be. I know he will be. But, Rachel, I'm not letting you pack up and leave without me again. I'm coming with you," he said, and tugged her to him. "I'm coming with you." He didn't know what had made him say it, but he was glad that he did. Her eyes dissolved into tears and she rushed towards him.

He pulled her close to him and wrapped his arms around her tightly, holding her and letting her cry. He was rubbing her back as she cried, but he didn't make any of those stupid, soothing, comforting noises. They didn't help. He knew that first-hand.

"He's going to be okay, Rach," he said to her, and hoped that he wasn't promising her something that wouldn't be true. "We just need to get you home so that you can see that, okay? You pack; I'll get on the computer and look up flight information, okay?" he said reassuringly.

"Okay," she said, and he released her to walk to the outer room. He knew that by not asking where to go to find the computer he was giving himself away, but he also knew that she wasn't paying enough attention to notice at the moment.

He found the computer and booked the first tickets he could find, leaving LaGuardia in 2 hours.

"Rach, come on, we've gotta go!" he called as he walked towards her room. She was just zipping the suitcase and had her purse on her shoulder.

"Pack up the laptop, would you?" she started to ask him, and then she turned to him. "Where are your clothes?" she shrieked.

"In the wash, where you left them," he replied.

"Oh _shit_," she cried, and he had to stop himself from laughing at how deranged she looked. It was almost like the old days, before she had begun to calm down a little bit.

"They're going to mildew, we can't leave the dryer on when we don't know how long we'll be gone, but you're in _boxers_ and you can't get on a plane in boxers, much less get into a taxi or go out on the street to get clothes…" she was tumbling through her words, and he was watching her in awe.

"Sweatpants, Berry?" he asked. "Where is that old Buckeyes shirt of your dads that you sleep in?"

"Umm," she paused, and for a second he thought he was going to have to go to the airport in soaking wet clothes.

"I have a pair of your old sweatpants and a jersey of yours here…" she said quietly. "I sleep in them sometimes, when I miss you."

He was wondering how often she missed him when she pulled his WMHS practice jersey and a pair of black sweatpants from her dirty laundry bin. Guess she missed him a lot. The thought made him feel slightly comforted, and he dressed quickly.

They got through security quickly and made it to the plane just as they were beginning to call their section for boarding. They quickly joined the queue at the counter and were shuttled onto the plane. They stowed her bags in the overhead bin (Noah had agreed to use one of her carry-ons as his own, so she wouldn't have to pay the extra fee) and settled into the seat.

"Breathe, just breathe," he reminded her as she nervously tapped her toes and drummed her fingers on the armrest. He could feel the adrenaline running through her; her nervous energy was seeping into the air around her. He wanted to comfort her and calm her, but he found that he didn't know how to do that anymore. He wasn't sure who this new Rachel was. He wasn't sure how she needed to be comforted, or if she would even accept his comfort.

The plane finally took off, and he and Rachel spent the entire plane ride in silence. They spoke only when the flight attendant asked if they would care for an in-flight beverage. While he could definitely have used a stiff whiskey to center himself again, he knew that it wasn't really in his best interests to do so. Plus, if he had a drink, Rachel would have a drink, and the last he knew, Rachel was a lightweight. And she was in shock. That would not be a good combination.

He declined the drink and so did she, and then they returned to the silence that had been hovering over them since they had boarded the plane. It felt almost as if they had been slammed back together because of an external, powerful event even though they weren't ready to be back together yet.

He pushed the thought out of his mind – now was not the time to be thinking about his relationship, or lack thereof, with Rachel. What was more important was her father. The man had held him as he cried for his daughter, and had stood up to Rachel for him on more than one occasion when she had gone a little crazy on him. Both of her fathers had attempted to step up and be the man for him that his father never wanted to be, and the fact that one of her dads, one of his dads, was in the hospital after having a heart attack, and was undergoing open-heart surgery, was painful to contemplate.

He knew that he had impulsively decided to go with her so that he could honor what her fathers had given to him and done for him. He had attempted to pass it off under the guise of being wary of letting her leave him, but he knew that he had really done it for her dad. So that he could be the sort of man her father had wanted him to be.

When the plane landed the two of them ran for the car rental area and Rachel used her credit card to secure a four-door sedan that had seen better days. Noah shoved her luggage in the trunk and opened the passenger door for her to get in. Wordlessly, she sat on the seat and pulled the seatbelt across her chest.

He walked around to the driver's side of the car thinking about how scarily quiet she had become. He had seen her fall into silence before, but not one as penetrating and as permanent as this. He had expected her to be full of tears and dramatics, but instead she had retreated so far inside herself that he could barely find a glimmer of life in her eyes.

Their silence extended as he drove them to the hospital. It was only when he began to pull into the parking lot that she turned to speak to him.

"Did you even call your mother to tell her you were coming into town?" she asked him, her voice monotone.

"No," he confessed guiltily. "I just got on the plane. I didn't think to let her know. I was more just in go-mode, you know?"

"Sure, sure," she replied, and then whispered, "thank-you for coming."

"Of course," he started awkwardly. "I care about your fathers. They're both good men. I owe it to the both of them to make sure that their daughter gets to them safely. I owe it to the both of them to make sure that they are okay, after they looked out for me for all of these years." He snapped his mouth shut. He had said more than he had intended to say.

"Oh," she said, and turned away from him again, staring out the window until he pulled into the parking spot. The ceasing of the motion seemed to snap Rachel out of her reverie and push her into action once more. She tore off her seatbelt and bolted from the car, leaving him to race to catch up to her.

She was running as she reached the admittance desk in the ER.

"We're here to see my father, the last name is Berry," she began, but Noah tugged her away from the desk.

"Noah!" she exclaimed, shocked, until she turned in the direction he was pulling her. She stopped fighting him and instead released his hand and ran across the hospital floor towards her father.

"Daddy!" she shouted, and Noah watched as her father caught her in his arms and held her to him. He hung back, wanting to give them space. Mr. Berry was a tall man, but his stature seemed so diminished as he held onto his tiny daughter for support. Noah could see that his shoulders were shaking, and he feared that they hadn't gotten there in time. He could feel himself begin to sink into the old memories when he heard Rachel call to him across the lobby.

"Noah! Come here!" she commanded, and he felt his heart lift. If she wasn't sobbing, if she hadn't collapsed, then it must not be over. The worst had not yet happened.

He walked over to Mr. Berry and held out his hand. Instead of shaking it, Rachel's father pulled him into a hug and whispered in his ear, "We'll talk about this later, okay?" before he pulled back.

"How is Mr. Berry, sir?" he asked, trying to hide the shock he felt at the older man's words.

"He made it out of surgery. There was a clot in one of his arteries and it moved into his heart. They got the clot out and performed some major surgery in there, but they think he's going to recover well. I told him to lay off the cream cheese, but no," Noah attempted a weak smile at the feeble joke.

"Can I go see him, Daddy?" Rachel asked her father, but the man shook his head.

"Not now, star," he said affectionately. "He's still in recovery, and he's knocked out with some very serious drugs. He wouldn't normally wake up for a few more hours at least, but they're going to keep him asleep a little longer to give him more time to rest and heal. You should go home and get some rest yourself, baby girl."

"Daddy…I want to see him. I need to make sure he's okay; that he's not going to…" Rachel's voice trailed off, and he could see that she couldn't even bring herself to say the words.

"I know, honey, but it's going to be a little while. Go home. Sleep. I've drunk too much Red Bull to do that now, even though the nurses keep trying to get me to lie down. Go home and rest. When I crash, you're going to have to be able to look after your dad while I sleep, okay?" her father said, and Noah appreciated the logic he was using to convince Rachel to go home.

"C'mon, Rach, I'll take you home," he said. "You need to get some sleep."

"Are you sure, Daddy?" she asked her father once more.

"Yes, I'm sure. Now go with Noah," her father said sternly.

Noah watched as Rachel hugged her father once more, and then stepped in to embrace the man again.

"This is an interesting development," Noah heard as he hugged her father again. He chose not to comment, and instead expressed his thanks that Mr. Berry was going to be okay, and promised to make sure that Rachel got some sleep.

He felt like he was having an out-of-body experience. Less than 24 hours ago, he had been told that he wasn't living up to his academic potential and was overcoming a hangover, and now he was in Lima with Rachel and he was about to go to her house with her for the first time in four years. It was surreal. He wasn't quite sure how to process it. So he pushed it away instead of dwelling on it.

"Come on, Rachel, let's go home," he said, and they walked back out to the hospital parking lot.


	11. Music on the Radio

**AN: I know it's short, and I know it's been a long time coming, but I hope that it is worth the wait. Thanks to my bestie and my (other) bestie for pushing me to write the next chapter, and to saradelovely for inspiring me to try out this whole writing thing again...**

**Disclaimer: I so obviously own nothing, it's ridiculous.

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The sound of wind chimes tinkling lightly began to swell through the car. The music began to build and over the string section the lyrics began to pour, a man calling out, "Well I built me a raft, and she's ready for floating…" Automatically her hand snapped forward and punched the power button on the stereo.

"No." It was the first word she had spoken since she had walked out of the hospital, and the word was dry in her throat. It rasped against her vocal chords and stumbled over her tongue. It hurt to speak. It hurt to _think_.

"Why?" he asked her, his confusion plain on his face.

"Black Water' is one of dad's favorite songs. He wants it to be the song we dance to at my wed-" she cut herself off. This is what happens when it hurts to think. You don't think and then you say things that you regret. Things that will hurt other people.

She didn't look at him, but she could feel the tension roll through him as he processed her words. She was glad when he ignored them, and pushed the power button on the stereo again.

"Fine. We'll get a different station," he said as he pressed the channel select button. The radio skipped ahead a few stations, and landed on a classic rock station.

"Well I remember us riding in my brother's car, her body tan and wet down at the reservoir…" sang the Boss, and this time it was Noah's turn to automatically punch the power off.

"I thought that you loved that song," Rachel said hesitantly, slightly whispering the words.

"I haven't been able to listen to it in years," he mumbled, his eyes focused straight ahead.

"Maybe we just shouldn't listen to music," she offered. Maybe music would be too painful.

"I can't take the silence anymore, Berry. I can't sit here and stew in my head any longer. I can't watch you and not watch you at the same time. I can't just sit here and relive everything and be thrown up in the air and be wanting to catch you while I'm falling just as fast! And the silence makes it worse. It makes the ground rush up faster. You don't have to sing, if you don't want to sing. You don't even have to listen. But I need this, okay? I need this just like you need to sit in your head and sort things out. I need music the way you need dictionaries, okay? It helps."

She nodded her head in assent, and pushed the power button again, automatically skipping forward again to the next radio station.

"The only difference that I see, is you are exactly the same, as you used to be…" sang Jakob Dylan, and Rachel let her hand fall off of the dial. She glanced at Puck for his approval, and while he didn't acknowledge her, he didn't move to change the station either.

_I wonder if that's true_ she thought. I wonder if he looks at me and sees the same girl I was four years ago. I wonder if he'll ever be able to look at me with the same love he had for me then. I wonder if he sees the girl who left him and smashed his heart into pieces. I wonder if that's all he'll ever be able to see.

"One boy, lives in a tower, with bow and arrow and an artificial heart," the lyrics continued, and Rachel thought of what Noah had been like over the last four years and realized that she didn't know. She hadn't gotten a chance to ask him what he had been doing in the four years they had been apart. He hadn't asked her either (_not that it matters_, she chided herself), but she wondered what he had done. Had he locked himself away in a tower, protecting himself?

Probably. She knew that the answer was probably yes, because he'd told her that he couldn't go back to being who he was before. He was stuck the way she had changed him.

"With his girl, maid of dishonor, he loaded the canon with a jealous appetite," Was that who she was? Was she the maid of dishonor? Who was she kidding; of course she was. She had disgraced him. She had broken him, and she had broken the promise she made to not hurt him; to protect him. She had broken him, and she wasn't sure she'd be able to put his pieces back together.

"They say that children now they come in all ages, and maybe sometimes old men die" the lyrics cut off as Rachel jumped ahead again on the radio. This time Noah didn't question the song change.

_He's not going to die, Rachel,_ she told herself, _just breathe_. But it was hard to breathe. She couldn't imagine her life without her dad. Her fathers had always been the strongest men she'd ever known. They had weathered so much for being who they were. They were an interfaith couple. They were an interracial couple. They had a surrogate daughter. And they were gay, in a small town. They had endured more prejudice and hatred than Rachel could imagine or understand. And yet, they had always remained strong and confident.

Her dad had been the one to put band-aids on her knees when she had been pushed down by Santana Lopez when she had been running for the swing-set. Santana was just jealous of Rachel's ability to run fast, her father had reassured her.

Her dad had been the one to dish up the ice cream when she came home from school stained blue from her very first slushie facial. He had urged her to be strong; confident, and know that accomplishing her dreams would make this all worthwhile.

Her dad had been the one to wake up early every Saturday morning to hose down the house before the egg hardened into tiny yellow globules. He had never let her come out to help him clean up, even though she knew it was her fault that he had to get up early on his day off to do it.

Her dad had always been strong for her, had supported her and taught her to love herself for who she was. She was who she was because her dad had helped make her that way, and she was afraid that if she lost him, she would lose who he had helped her to become. If she lost him, she would lose herself.

She didn't notice that she was sobbing until Noah had pulled over into the parking lot at James' Park. Now that she was aware of the sobs she felt like she was choking on them. It felt like her tears were backing up in her throat and that she'd never be able to get them out of her chest. She realized that she was shaking violently and that her hands were clawing at the seatbelt, trying to get it off of her chest.

"Hey, hey," he said, his voice calm and soothing. His larger hands steadied hers, and then he reached down to unbuckle the seatbelt. As soon as it was undone, she tore it off of her chest and crumpled forward; her face on her knees.

"I can't lose him, I can't lose my dad," she cried. She was squeezing her body to her knees to try to hold it together.

"You're not going to lose him, Rachel, your daddy said he would be okay, remember?" Noah asked her, but she wasn't really able to digest his words.

"I mean, just think, he'll never get to see what he's done for me. He'll never see all of his support pay off. He'll never see me on Broadway. I'll never get to cook Seder dinner for him in my own place. I'll never get to dance with him at my wedding. I'll never be able to introduce my children to their grandfather. He'll miss so much, and it won't be the same, it won't mean the same thing, because there'll be someone missing. He'll be missing," she wailed.

"Rachel! He's going to be okay, he's going to be okay," she could hear Noah speaking somewhere outside of the fog she was stuck in, but she couldn't fight her way to him. The idea of losing her dad was just too real and too painful to bear. She stopped trying to speak, and just clenched her legs to her stomach harder, holding herself together, trying to stop the sobs that were ripping through her body.

She didn't register that Noah had gotten out of the car until he was opening the passenger door. He bent down and lifted her out of the car, cradling her in his arms. He turned around so that he was facing the parking lot and then sat back down inside the car with his feet on the asphalt.

She uncurled from her knees and lay her head against his shoulder; her hands lying limply in her lap. She could feel the tears continue to fall on her face, but she didn't feel like she was still crying. She stared off into the distance while Noah held her, the car still running, the music still playing. Every so often she would hiccup on her tears and then start crying harder.

"Shhh, shhh," Noah said, holding her tightly to him. "Just listen to the music," he advised her. She kept her head against his shoulder and listened to the song starting to play softly in the car.

"You're cynical and beautiful; you always make a scene,"  Noah sang along to the song, whisper singing the words into her ear.

"You're monochrome, delirious; you're nothing that you seem," he continued, and she could feel him smile into her hair.

"I'm drownin' in your vanity; your laugh is a disease;  you're dirty and you're sweet; you know you're everything to me," he sang, and the music swelled to the chorus.

"Oh, everything you are falls from the sky like a star; everything you are, whatever ever you are…" continued the song, and when he sang about the star, he brushed the spot on her right hipbone where she had always said she wanted to get a tattoo of a star.

"I wanna kill at the machine that made you piss away you dreams; tear down your defenses till there's nothing there but me." His voice was rough as he sang these lines. She knew that he was thinking of what she had told him in the apartment, about her lack of success, her lack of friends, the way she had made it through school without him.

"You're angry when you're beautiful, your love is such a tease; I'm drowning in your dizzy noise, I wanna feel you scream…" she felt him suck in a breath, and the fingers on her hipbone twitched slightly. He had told her once that what he found sexiest about her was her passion. Her passion for anything was the most beautiful thing about her (so he said) because it made her radiant. Whether she was excited, defensive, or angry, it didn't matter. Whenever she got all worked up over something, he was all over her, as if he couldn't ever get enough.

He loved to tease her until the point of anger; get her all worked up in a tizzy and then amp up the energy for some really athletic make-up sex. And…well… in true Puckerman fashion, he had loved to make her scream.

"Oh, everything you are falls from the sky like a star; everything you are, whatever ever you are, oh, everything you are falls from the sky like a star; everything you are, whatever ever you are…" the chorus repeated until it wound down to the conclusion of the song.

"Thank-you, Noah," she said to him, and she slowly wrapped her arms around his torso, pulling him close to her before settling back into his chest, her head laying gently against the hollow of his neck.

They remained in that position for at least an hour, Rachel staring out at the parking lot and the cars passing by on the main road. Noah sang along to the songs that he knew, singing softly into her hair.

When she finally did move, she was stiff from staying in the same position for so long.

"Take me, home, please?" she asked him, turning to stand in front of him.

"Of course," he replied, and he got out of the passenger seat. When he stood up, he pulled her against him and hugged her tightly before murmuring, "he'll be okay, you'll see," in her ear.

He waited for her to get back in the car and then shut the door for her before going back around to the drivers' side door. Once back in the car, Rachel turned the music up slightly and he backed the car out of the parking space.

The radio kept playing as he drove her back towards her fathers' house. She hadn't thought of the place as home in so long; it had been four years since she had last felt comfortable there. The landmarks of her childhood flashed past her in blurs and tear-stained streaks and closed her eyes, so that she wouldn't lose control of her emotions again.

It was painful and strange to return to Lima with Noah by her side. The last time she had been in a car with him in this town, he had been driving her home after the fateful graduation party. Life had looked so different to her then. There had been no question in her mind as to whether or not she would become a star. The only sticking points had been Noah, and her love for him.

She glanced over at him when he rolled to a stop at the stop sign of her street. She watched him as he closed his eyes and sighed, flicking on the right-turn blinker. She knew how much pain she had caused him (how could she forget his impassioned speech this morning?) and yet he still had chosen to support her when she needed someone. He hadn't even been back in her life a full 24 hours, and suddenly they were together in Lima, in a car, driving to the house that held so many memories for the two of them.

He pulled the car smoothly into the driveway and put the car in park. She watched as he closed his eyes again and moved his lips just slightly. She could barely hear his voice, let alone discern what he said, but it seemed almost as if he was uttering a small prayer.

As if he could feel her watching him, he opened his eyes and cracked a weak smile in her direction before he tugged on the door handle and got out of the car. She followed his lead and got out of the car, staring up at the house.

Not much has changed, she thought, and walked slowly up the sidewalk. She could hear Noah unloading the trunk behind her, as she walked dazedly up to the front door. She fished her keys out of her purse and slid the house-key into the lock; she had never removed it from her key-ring.

Once she had stepped inside the front hall she turned to find Noah almost directly behind her, his chest rapidly rising and falling as if he was overexerted.

"Why are you out of breath?" she asked him, her voice unsure.

"The last time I watched you walk towards that door, you shut it behind you and I didn't see you again for four years," he explained. "I wasn't going to risk another four years just because I was slow bringing in the bags."

His words were grave, but his face was light and joking. The humor and the severity of the situation hit her at once, and the emotions of the last 24 hours began to crash over her again. She was crying and laughing hysterically and she could tell that she was scaring him, so she pulled herself to a complete stop. If anything, when she stopped abruptly, he looked more afraid, rather than reassured.

"Rachel? Are you okay?" he asked her worriedly, his eyes crinkling at the corners.

"Noah," she breathed, and then she propelled herself forward and molded her body against his.

"Noah," she whispered, and then, for the first time in four years, she kissed him.


	12. Come on Baby, Make Sweet Love to Me

**AN: So I think this is the longest chapter I've ever written, but it had to be done. A bit of forewarning, there is some definite sexy-time in this chapter, so if that doesn't agree with your sensibilities, don't read it. Also, I really, really would love reviews for this chapter, or for the story in general. Is it going where you want it to go? What do you like? What do you dislike? I have so many alerts, but they aren't equal to the number of reviews, so I'm not totally sure what you're all feeling/thinking. Finally, I would like to offer a big congratulations to the cast and crew of this lovely show for their win at the Golden Globes tonight!**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Glee.

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For a moment he was lost as time and space dropped away from him. For a moment he was floating in the ether feeling nothing but warm _bliss_ engulfing him and then the bottom dropped out of his stomach as he realized exactly what the _fuck_ was happening. Rachel was kissing him. He was kissing her, kissing Rachel, in the foyer of her fathers' house, and it was brilliant but devastating at the same time.

When her lips had collided with his, he felt the warm rush of familiarity and her could feel the blood pulsing through her lips, her mouth pushing hard against his. He felt as if she was trying to meld them into one person, as if she wanted to crawl inside of him and hide.

He also felt shooting, stabbing needles of pain driving at his heart and his brain. He had forgotten how amazing it felt to kiss her; he hadn't thought about how much it would hurt to realize what he had been missing for four years. To feel her betrayal in every movement of her mouth against his. To feel her absence in the absence of his breath. He felt as if his very molecules were at war with each other, some fighting to give in to love, some fighting to get out before he got hurt.

He pushed himself away from her abruptly; holding her away from him at arm's length while he tried to catch his breath. He glanced at her, watching her chest heave up and down as if she had just completed a marathon. Her eyes were glittering with tears and she absently brushed her fingertips over her lips.

"Why did you stop?" she asked him, and he could hear the heartbreak in her voice; the need, the _want_ that layered her voice thickly.

"I need a minute, Rachel," he whispered. He couldn't think of anything to say; at the moment he couldn't remember _why_ he had pushed her away from him.

"Don't think, please, don't think," she pled with him, and he was having trouble concentrating on what he wanted to say to her.

"I don't want to think, I don't want to talk, I just want to listen to the music and just _be_ with you without having to psychoanalyze everything," the words tumbled out of her, and he felt ice harden in the center of his heart. He was worrying about how to organize his love for her, and she wanted a pity fuck.

Well, fuck that shit. If she wanted a pity fuck and she didn't want to discuss their past and actually work out a decent way to relearn one another, then he didn't give a shit either. Maybe he just needed to fuck her and get her out of his system, once and for all.

"Don't move," he growled at her, and the sudden change in his demeanor locked her in place. He stalked towards her and took in the expression on her face. Her eyes were wide with fear and desire and she was gnawing on her lower lip, waiting for his next move.

"I'm going to finish what I started this morning," he murmured to her, his voice deep and dark. He watched her eyes close and flutter in anticipation. He resolved not to disappoint her. If she wanted to walk away after this, then it would definitely be her loss.

He moved so that he was well inside the bubble of her personal space; he could feel the heat from her small frame close to his body. Again, he held himself just far enough away from her to leave her questioning his movements and intentions. There was so much tension between the two of them, it was almost as if magnets were pushing him towards her, drawing him closer and closer to her.

He leaned down and tilted her chin up with his right hand, fingers gentle but commanding. With his left hand he brushed her hair away from her right shoulder and leaned down to her ear. He could hear her breath hitch in her throat, her pulse begin to race. As he brushed the last strands of hair away, he let his lips graze against her ear as he whispered, "Is this what you want?" before he dropped his mouth to her clavicle.

He let his teeth graze over the bone, eliciting a gasp from Rachel as his teeth gently bit at her skin. Pausing in his attentions, he again raised his mouth to her ear.

"Is this what you want? You want me to kiss you and taste you; touch you and devour you?" he whispered seductively, and then he placed a burning kiss on the skin beneath her earlobe.

He raised his right hand and let it fall gently down the front of her torso, lightly touching her body. His fingertips ran over the smooth fabric of her clothing and over her small curves. He barely applied any pressure, making sure to leave her wanting more from him.

He watched her as he ran his fingers back up the middle of her torso, applying light pressure from her navel to the hollow of her throat. Her eyes were half-closed and her lips were barely parted; she was panting slightly.

Noah removed his fingers from her body and tightened his hand into a fist by his side. He leaned forward again, dipping his head down so that he was closer to her face. He dropped kisses on her forehead, her nose, her cheekbones, the underside of her jaw, taking great care not to give into his desire to kiss her full on the mouth again.

Sighing lightly, he pulled back from her again. His left hand trailed up her left side, and he asked her one more time, "Is this what you want? You want me to take you here, in the foyer? You want me to fuck you, to make you forget what you're feeling right now? Is that what you want?" he asked her, his voice rising in intensity.

Rachel closed her eyes, but her lips were still parted; she was still breathing heavily from their encounter. He grew impatient at her delay in answering him, and his voice was on edge when he said, "Tell me, dammit! Tell me that's what you want!"

"Yes," she gasped out; her eyes flying open at his words. Though he tried, Noah was unable to read the emotions in her eyes. She looked conflicted, composed, agitated, pained, and desirous all at once. "Yes, but," she began again, but Noah cut her off by slamming his mouth into hers. He didn't want to hear whatever "but" she was about to admit to; he didn't want her to place limitations on what was about to happen here. If this was what she wanted; if this was all she wanted of him; if this was how this was supposed to happen, then he would give in and give it to her. He was tired of waiting around for her; he was tired of trying to dream up ways to try to be with her again. He had spent four years planning and scheming and building and dreaming, and for it to culminate in this; in a pity fuck in the foyer of her fathers' home in Lima, well, godammit, he was in it for the long haul.

And so he kissed her. He put everything he had, every thought, feeling, emotion, prayer, and accusation he could muster into his kiss. His mouth was not gentle against hers, and she yielded under his pressure. He felt warm victory as her mouth parted and he swept his tongue into her mouth; tasting her and claiming her as his own.

It was not a sweet kiss by any means. It was not poetic; it was not perfect. It was not everything he had been dreaming of for years and years. It was angry and violent and he could feel his lips bruising against hers as their teeth clattered against each other.

The entire time he had been kissing her he had managed to keep his hands to himself, but he found that he was unable to control his hands any longer. He roughly pulled her to him, seizing her by her upper arms and lifting her slightly off the floor, so that she was barely able to keep her balance. Wickedly, he grinned to himself. He _liked_ the idea of keeping her off balance.

He buried his fingers in her hair and tugged her face closer to him. Bitterly, he withdrew his mouth from hers and began to kiss her jawline and bite at her earlobe. He sank his teeth into the tender lobe and was pleased when she sucked in her breath; squeaking slightly at the end.

His mouth moved lower onto her neck and his hands fisted in her hair, arching her neck so that her throat was vulnerable and exposed to him. Grinning, he ran his teeth over her throat and then bit down on the most tender portion of her skin. He nibbled and sucked at her skin, and when he pulled back from her throat he could see the vampire bite that he had left her with; branding her as his own.

_She won't be yours for very long_ he scolded himself, banishing the thoughts of forever to the back of his mind. She didn't want him forever. She only wanted him for right now.

The thought angered him and he poured his energy into his time with her. He grasped her upper body once again and propelled her backwards until she hit the wall of the stairs. He didn't even give her time to breathe as his mouth assaulted her once more. He grabbed her hands in his and pulled them up over her body so that they were high above her head. He pinned her arms against the wall as he kissed her; listening to her moan and feeling her writhe against him.

Keeping her wrists pinned against the wall with his left hand, he used his right to memorize her body; moving his fingertips down her throat, over her collarbone, between the incredible swell of her breasts, across her stomach, and down to her left hip, which he gripped firmly. He applied pressure with his thumb and traced her hipbone before he slid his hand up her left side until he was just beneath her breast.

She pushed herself off the wall in her attempts to make him touch her; and he chuckled against her jawbone as he held her firmly in place. He eased away from her slowly as he enjoyed the sight of her coming undone against the wall. Even though he had released her wrists, she still held them above her head. Her chest was heaving and she was staring at him with eyes filled with an emotion he _could _accurately define: _lust_.

He moved back towards her, but instead of continuing his assault on her mouth and neck, he gripped the edges of her button down shirt and ripped them apart. He didn't care whether or not the shirt was able to be fixed or whether or not shirt-ripping was cliché. He only knew that he wanted what was beneath the shirt, and he wasn't going to play nice about getting it.

He pushed the edges of the shirt to her sides and moved his fingers over her bare skin; goosebumps rising in the wake of his fingertips. He watched her nipples harden beneath the simple satin of her bra and she arched away from the wall once more.

"Please," she whispered to him through clenched teeth, and that simple word almost sent him over the edge.

"You don't get to ask me for anything, do you understand?" he asked her; his voice simultaneously cold and seductive.

"Yes," she replied, and he smirked as she shivered once more.

"Good," he replied, and then he pried her hands apart and pushed her arms back down the wall until they hung by her side. As if she knew she wasn't allowed to control any aspect of their interaction, she let them hang there, palms up-turned as if waiting for instruction. He pushed her button down back over her shoulders and slid the sleeves halfway down until her arms were firmly imprisoned. He thrust her back against the wall and moved his mouth back to her collarbone.

Slowly, impossibly slowly, he moved his mouth down over her chest until he reached the satin cups of her bra. Instead of removing her bra, he moved his mouth over the fabric, biting at the smooth material. Her chest arched against his mouth, pushing her as close to him as she possibly could be. He moved his attentions to her other breast and then, when he felt she wouldn't be able to take much more, he moved down below her breasts, tonguing the smooth skin beneath the satin.

She groaned and he moved his mouth to her right side and bit down, hard. She jerked violently against the wall and he continued to attack her with his teeth and tongue, biting and kissing his way across her stomach. He sank to his knees and paused at her naval, thrusting his tongue into her belly button. As he moved off of the floor he dragged his tongue back up her body until he was mouth-level with her breasts.

He dragged the satin cup down with his teeth, baring the top of her left breast to the air. She hissed as he pulled away from her again, but he had had enough of teasing her. He wanted to see her; to see _all_ of her, and he was tired of satin getting in the way.

Spinning her around so that she was pressed against the wall, he pushed himself up against her. His mouth moved automatically to the spot on the back of her neck that drove her crazy. As his tongue teased that secret spot just below her hairline she groaned loud and long and pushed back against him with her ass.

He moved away from her slightly, giving his fingers just enough room to maneuver the clasp of her bra. He popped it open easily and spun her back around so that she hit the wall again with a jolt. He slid the straps of her bra down her shoulders until they met with her half-undone shirt. Grunting in frustration, Noah pushed her shirt-sleeves all the way down her arms and then pushed her bra straps the rest of the way down. Her bra dropped beneath them to the floor, and in the moment it took to drop, their eyes met for one intense moment.

The sound of her bra hitting the floor was the only catalyst he needed to propel him into motion once more. He grabbed her hips and slid her up the wall as she wrapped her legs around him. He moved his mouth down to the soft skin of her breasts, trailing his tongue over the hard peaks of her nipples. He moved back and blew cool air across her nipple, and she hissed at him and pulled his face back to her chest.

The foyer fell away from him once more and he was unable to concentrate on anything other than Rachel Berry. Her skin, her warmth, her scent; it all overpowered him and made him weak and vulnerable in front of her.

Shaking his head, he steadied himself. He could not afford to fall apart in front of her. Instead he pushed her back against the wall and moved his hand between their bodies, undoing the button and zipper of her jeans with a practiced quickness. She shimmied quickly out of her jeans and panties and then he let her take over as she quickly undressed him.

He allowed himself a long look at her naked body and then he pressed her back against the wall. Trembling, she raised her legs once more to wrap around him. He could feel her nervous anticipation, her excitement at what was to come. He lifted her slightly up and away from his body, angling her just right.

Using the wall and his left hand to support her, he dropped his right down to his dick and slid it teasingly over her folds. Her only response was to whimper and attempt to grind against him. At her movement, he stopped teasing her abruptly.

"You want this?" he asked her, his voice husky.

"Yes, yes, I want you," Rachel choked out, and he loved the frustration in her tone.

"You want me? You want me to do what?" he asked, teasing her again as he slid the tip of his cock along her slick center.

"I want...oh _God_, I want you to...mmmmmph," she stopped speaking English as he lightly circled his dick over her clit.

"Yes?" he responded encouragingly.

"I want you to _fuck me_," Rachel begged him, and before she could even finish saying "me" he was slamming inside of her, not bothering to take his time.

"_Fuck_!" she screamed as he went all the way to the hilt, filling her entirely.

"You like that, baby?" he asked her, his voice low and tight as he thrust into her again.

"Yesssssss" she hissed back at him, throwing her head back against the wall.

"What about this?" he asked her, and began to rub her clit with his thumb in soft, lazy circles. While his thumb kept up a rhythm on her clit, he continued to pump in and out of her.

"Oh, oh, oh, yes," she whimpered at him, and he began to rub her clit faster, increasing the pressure he applied to that sweet spot. She began to make small gasping noises as he slid in and out of her harder and harder. He could feel her orgasm begin to build inside of her as she clenched her walls down on him.

She began to meet his thrusts; using the wall as a support to move herself with. He picked up the tempo he kept on her clit and she forced herself all the way down his length as her release finally exploded inside of her.

Feeling her orgasm rip through her was almost enough to cause him to come, but he wasn't Finn and this wasn't high school anymore. Instead, he peeled her off of the wall and pulled her forward so that she was leaning against his chest, their bodies slick and sticky with sweat.

He waited until her arms were around him and then he carried her up the stairs to her old bedroom. He paused briefly outside her bedroom door and he felt her stop breathing for a small moment before he turned the door handle and crossed the threshold.

He forced himself not to think of the previous times he had been in her bedroom, because he might not be able to continue and do what he had to do if he let his thoughts linger there. Instead, he carried her to the bed and gently tilted her onto the covers.

"You're not stopping, are you?" she asked him, surprise in her voice.

"No, baby, we're just getting started," he purred at her, and then dove back onto the bed.

Once he had finally come (with a roar that startled even him) their bodies were coated with sweat and her hair was sticking to her face. Even so, he thought she had never looked so beautiful. He had worn her out; her body was trembling with exhaustion and her eyelids could rise no further than half-mast.

"Thank-you," he heard her say, but he silenced her with a small kiss.

"Don't say anything, just sleep," he told her, and she rolled over gratefully and let out a contented sigh.

"Will you turn on the radio?" she asked him. "I sleep with music on in the city, to drown out the noise. Now I can't stay asleep without it," she explained.

"Sure," he said, and rose from the bed to turn on her old CD player. He flipped the channel to his favorite classic rock station, and then turned off her bedroom light.

He stood in the darkness watching her sleep as his mind tried to make sense of everything that had happened. He had thought that they were moving forward; that they were going to be able to heal from everything that had happened between them. He had thought that by coming back to Lima with her, they would begin to build a new future together. Her words in the foyer had shown him that this wasn't what she wanted.

She didn't want to build things or fix things. She wanted to escape from what was going on in her personal life. It wouldn't have mattered if it was him or her stupid fucking professor/mentor that had been standing with her in the foyer of the house. She would have done the same damn thing, no matter who was there with her.

The rational part of his brain argued with him that her father's condition might have been her impetus for sleeping with him, but what she had said to him in her apartment had been real and honest. And if he was being honest with himself, the words in the apartment were the part that mattered. Not the sex. He knew that that made him a pussy, but he also knew that she had meant everything she had said to him; she just wasn't in a place to fix things yet. She had too much to deal with at the moment.

He knew she needed to get her head on straight. He knew that his presence interfered with her thinking. He knew that her presence interfered with _his_ thinking, and he needed to sort himself out, as well.

She snorted lightly in her sleep, and it drew him out of his reverie. He registered the song playing on the radio, and it inspired him. He went to her desk as quietly as possible and pulled out a few sheets of paper and a pen and set to work.

_Dear Rachel, _his letter began, even though he felt it would be more appropriate to call her Berry after all this time.

_When you read this, I'll be gone. The rental car will still be here; don't worry. The keys are on the dresser. You and I both know why I needed to leave. In case you don't, I'll try to explain it to you here: _

_When the wind blows and the rain feels cold _

_With a head full of snow _

_With a head full of snow _

_In the window there's a face you know _

_Don't the night pass slow _

_Don't the nights pass slow _

_ Right now, Rachel, you're weathering something that you need to come through on your own; otherwise you'll never be able to believe that you can handle it. That you can handle whatever life throws at you. And you and me? Right now, we've got heads full of snow, and what we did tonight was only evidence of that. I was the face in your window; we chose not to let the night pass slow. _

_ We did what we had to do; what we needed to do to get some of the crazy out of our systems. You know we did. We have too much crazy going on right now for you or I to make it out of this sane or alive. Or together, for that matter. And believe me, I want us to be together. _

_ The sound of strangers sending nothing to my mind _

_Just another mad mad day on the road _

_I am just living to be lying by your side _

_But I'm just about a moonlight mile on down the road _

_ We had a mad day on the road, Rach. But I don't want a crazy circumstance to force us together again. I want it to be natural and organic and different from the way it was in high school. We can't keep getting pushed together by bad situations. You and I both need to enter this whole; not broken. Not looking for someone to put us back together. _

_ Believe me, though. I am just living to be lying by your side. Even while I write you this letter, I am watching you sleep and wishing that I could crawl into bed next to you and just stay. I wish I could stay. But I can't. Not and do what we have to do; not to become what we will become. _

_ Made a rag pile of my shiny clothes _

_Gonna warm my bones _

_Gonna warm my bones _

_I got silence on my radio _

_Let the air waves flow _

_Let the air waves flow_

_ So I'm going to call the taxi-man, and I'm going to get a ride to the airport. And I'm going to tell him not to put on any music, because music sounds better (sounds right) when I listen to it with you. _

_ Oh I'm sleeping under strange strange skies _

_Just another mad mad day on the road _

_My dreams is fading down the railway line _

_I'm just about a moonlight mile on down the road _

_Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah_

_ I'm not going to lie to you, Rachel. When you told me earlier that you didn't want to talk, that you wanted to just be… it almost killed something inside of me. And I thought all you wanted was a pity fuck. I didn't want to be that guy to you, but it hurt me that you would even ask me to be that guy for you. And so I went along with it, and the whole time I was convinced that you didn't care, that it was just because of what happened with your dad, and I felt my dreams for our future slipping away from me. And you know what, baby? That sucked. To feel my dreams of you and me slipping through my fingertips one more time. _

_ I'm hiding sister and I'm dreaming _

_I'm riding down your moonlight mile _

_I'm hiding baby and I'm dreaming _

_I'm riding down your moonlight mile _

_I'm riding down you moonlight mile _

_ But the dreams are still here, Rach. They still exist. I fought with the stupid part of me, and for once, the smart side won. I still have to leave; despite the victory. Because you and I need to work our shit out soon, but we can't do it yet. So I'm going to leave, but I'll still keep dreaming those dreams, and I'll still be waiting for you. _

_ Let it go now, come on up babe _

_Yeah, let it go now _

_Yeah, flow now baby _

_Yeah move on now yeah _

_ So I need you to make this worthwhile for us. I need you to fix what you need to fix on your own. I need you to live, baby, I need you to breathe. I need my crazy Berry back. So take care of what you have to take care of, okay? _

_Yeah, I'm coming home _

_'Cause, I'm just about a moonlight mile on down the road _

_Down the road, down the road _

_Yeah, yeah, hey hey hey baby, now_

_ This might seem like I'm abandoning you; like I'm retaliating for what happened four years ago, but I'm not. I spent too long working for you, searching for you, and waiting for you to just drop everything and leave you behind. _

_ When you're ready; when your head's on straight and your dad is okay and you're okay again, then we'll be ready. I promise to get my shit straight in the meantime. And when you're ready, baby, we'll make it work. Take care of your father. Take care of yourself._

_ I love you. _

_ Noah_

At the bottom of his letter he wrote down all of his contact information, so that she would know he was serious about not abandoning her. He also told her that if she called him within the next few days, he wouldn't answer because she wouldn't be ready yet.

Once he had finished with the letter he left it next to her head on the pillow, and kissed her once more. He called the only taxi company he knew, and walked out of her room and down the stairs. When he reached the bottom floor he gathered his clothing off the floor and dressed slowly in the darkness, making sure that he was doing the right thing.

The song that had inspired him had long since stopped playing on the radio, but as he walked out her front door and pulled out his keys to lock the door, he whistled the last refrain of "Moonlight Mile" under his breath and turned the lock. Beginning to hum the song from the beginning, he walked to the end of the driveway to wait for the cab.

_"When the wind blows, and the rain feels cold…"

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**AN2: I do not own "Moonlight Mile" by the Rolling Stones, but it is an _amazing_ song, and you should all listen to it. **

**AN3: I forgot to give credit to the songs used in the last chapter. I own none of them, either. They are (in order of appearance): "Black Water" by the Doobie Brothers, "The River" by Bruce Springsteen, "The Difference" by the Wallflowers, and finally, "Dizzy" by the GooGoo Dolls. **


	13. Oh Little Sister

**AN: This chapter seems a bit unwieldy to me, but it accomplishes its purpose. I sincerely hope my bestie notices her special shout out in this chapter. Brownie points to you, mama, if you spot it! Other than that, read and review. **

**Disclaimer: I own the dream I have where I get to be involved with Glee someday. Other than that, nothing. **

She knew before she was even awake that he was gone. She had known that he would leave from the moment he had kissed her downstairs; she had felt the urge to _run_ pounding inside of him as his lips had moved over hers. She could understand how he would want to protect himself. Self-preservation. Survival of the fittest. Perhaps his heart was the stronger one, because as she stayed motionless on the bed she could literally _feel_ her heart breaking.

She knew that he was gone, she had known that he would leave; but that didn't stop it from hurting. She had predicted it, and had tried to steel herself against waking up alone, but it hadn't worked; knowing in advance didn't help matters any. She had hoped that he would change his mind and stay with her, singing lullabies into her skin and dropping kisses onto her eyelids. He hadn't stayed, and it hurt like fucking hell.

Daggers of sunlight stabbed at her eyes as she lifted their heavy lids. Waking up was so much harder when you knew that there wasn't anyone to wake up next to. She sighed and rolled over onto her back to stare at the ceiling. Was this it? Was last night their only night together? Would she ever see him again? She knew that she had broken him four years before, but when he had come with her to Lima, she had hoped that they might begin the healing process.

Her phone rang, jarring her out of her thoughts. She launched herself out of the bed and nearly ran into her dresser. She glanced at the display and felt her heart instantly sink into her stomach. She had woken up thinking of Noah when she should have been thinking about her father. She had flown to Lima to see him and take care of him, _not_ to sleep with Noah Puckerman one last time. She felt guilt creep into the lower portion of her belly, its' coils churning and broiling as she thought about what a self-absorbed daughter she had been.

"Hey, Daddy," she said as she resolved to not let the night with Noah dominate her brain. She had bigger issues to deal with. She needed to be there for her father, as he had been there for her.

"Star!" her father exclaimed. "I've been calling you for almost an hour – where have you been? Were you still asleep?"

"I'm sorry, Daddy, I had a rough night last night…once I finally got to sleep, I think my body intended to keep my there for a while. I didn't mean to scare you," she apologized.

"Is Dad okay?" she asked, feeling the guilt squirm through her intestines. "Is he awake yet?"

"That's why I was calling – they're going to begin bringing him out of sedation in about 20 minutes, and I knew you would want to be here when he woke up."

"Of course, Daddy, I won't even shower. I'm on my way," she promised as she hung up the phone and ran down the stairs in search of her luggage.

It was sitting just inside the front door, exactly where Noah had deposited it after he had raced inside after her. She paused at the bottom of the stairs and surveyed the damage they had done the night before: the rug had been moved halfway down the hall and half of it was curled on top of itself. The picture of her fathers' first house was skewed on the wall and the wall itself bore scuff marks in a place that wasn't easily explained.

She swore under her breath and zoomed around the foyer straightening and attempting to hide. She concocted an elaborate plan to explain the scuff marks that involved spectacularly falling in the foyer just as they got home…without actually hurting herself or either one of her fathers.

She tore through her suitcase and put on the first t-shirt and pair of jeans that she found. Barely pausing to re-zip her suitcase, she tore back up the stairs and into the bedroom where a thought made her come to an abrupt halt: Noah had been the one driving. Noah had the keys to rental car. Noah was gone, and he had most likely used the car to make himself that way.

_Shit fuck damn mother-fucking piss ass cunt_, she thought to herself, and she flopped down on the edge of the bed, trying to work out a _new_ plan. Because Daddy Berry had most definitely seen her with Noah yesterday, and he had most definitely heard Noah say that he was going to take her home. And despite the fact that her father had been through an emotional hell in the last few days, he was most certainly keenly aware of what he had witnessed yesterday, and _no amount_ of smooth-talking was going to convince him that Noah Puckerman had been a hallucination.

She let her head sag down towards her chest, and as she did so she noticed the glimmer of metal on top of the dresser. On top of the same stupid dresser that her cell phone had been charging. She grabbed the keys off of the dresser and flew down the stairs, pausing only to snatch her purse off of the foyer floor.

The rental car sat exactly where Noah had parked it the day before, which showed her that he hadn't had a moment's hesitation at leaving the car behind. He hadn't attempted to use it to make his escape, only to have a change of conscience. The thought both warmed and stung her heart, so she forced the thought of him from her head and drove in silence to the hospital.

Her father greeted her at the elevator and guided her down the hallway to her father's room.

"Now, Star," her father began affectionately, "Dad doesn't really look like Dad right now. I know it might be scary to see, but he needs us to be strong for him, and help him to not be scared, okay?"

"Of course, Daddy," she whispered, and she steeled herself against what she was about to see. Her father took her hand in his, and she took a deep breath. Her father smiled at her and reassured her.

"He's going to be fine, Rachel," he said, and then he pushed the lever on the door. The door swung open, and Rachel was forcibly reminded of the last time she had visited someone in a hospital room. Though her relationship with Quinn had never been strong, their car accident and the loss of her baby had bonded them together. When Rachel had crawled into the hospital bed next to Quinn, the two of them had shared their grief. That shared experience had helped her to become one of Rachel's closest and (since high school graduation) only friends.

Now, as Rachel walked through the doorway to her father's hospital room, she remembered the tang of hospital air and the resolute high-pitched beeping of medical machines. She tore her eyes from the shiny tile floor and moved them up to the hospital bed.

Her father was lying on his back with his eyes closed. Her strong, vibrant father looked nothing like himself bathed in fluorescent hospital lighting and swathed in the pale, generic facility linens. Clear plastic tubing snaked its' way up her father's nose and patches of medical tape held needles in place. Electronic sensors were stuck haphazardly across her father's chest and arms; a small plastic sleeve monitored his pulse on one of his fingers.

She felt tears threatening to well up in her eyes, but she forced them back, commanding herself to be strong. Her throat felt as if she was choking on a large lump of anguish, and her hands trembled at her sides. She saw her dad gaze at her, silently questioning her preparedness. She nodded once in affirmation, and walked towards the bed.

"Dad," she whispered as she reached the edge of the bed. She clasped his unadorned hand in hers and joy flowed through her as she discovered the warmth and vitality that the hospital setting had hidden from her.

"Dad, are you awake?" she asked him again, unable to move her eyes from her father's sleeping face.

"He should be coming out of it soon – they backed off on the drugs early enough that the nurses say he should be coming around any moment now," her father reassured her.

She stared at her father, taking in his face. The smooth, firm skin she had grown up with (and still pictured when she thought of her father) had been replaced by skin that was looser. There was a slight sag in the skin by his jawbone; his nose seemed larger, fleshier than it ever had before. Crow's feet had given way to laugh lines, which were deepening into wrinkles. His hair was dotted with grey, white, and silver, and she wondered when he had begun to get so old.

She was only 22; her fathers weren't supposed to be old yet. In her heart, she knew that 53 and 55 weren't really even close to old age (especially by today's standards) but seeing her father looking so frail in the hospital bed made her realize the instability of mortality and the ever-advancing onslaught of time.

She felt more guilt wash into her intestines, and she realized that she had been so preoccupied with making a name for herself and putting on a façade that she had failed to really pay attention to the two men who meant the most to her in her life. Her fathers had given her everything she could ever have hoped for, and she had brushed them to the side. Instead of paying attention to their needs, she had focused solely on her own.

She knew that they wanted her to achieve her goals, and that they were proud of her for everything that she had accomplished, but she knew that she had focused too much energy on her goals, and not enough on her life. That had always been something she had needed to work on, and now she was faced with her failure in that area.

She was staring at her father's chest when she felt his fingers twitch in her hand. She and her daddy gathered close around the hospital bed and tracked every single indication that her dad was coming out of sedation. Moments passed and they both watched with anticipation as her dad's eyelids struggled to open.

"Hi," her dad rasped, and Rachel's father gently slipped an ice cube into his husband's mouth. The gesture was so sweet, so simple, that Rachel was overwhelmed by their love and devotion for each other. She felt as if she were witnessing something that was private, and that she should leave them alone.

"Rachel," her dad whispered from a gravelly throat, "you're here."

"Of course I'm here, Dad, where else would I be?" she questioned him, and squeezed his hand. "I'm so glad that you're going to be okay, Dad. I love you so much," she told him, and fought back against the tears.

"Love you, too," her dad replied, and then lapsed back into silence.

"How do you feel?" she asked her father as she traced her thumb over his hand.

"Like I had a heart attack," he joked, but it seemed to be a struggle to say so many words.

"Are you tired, Dad? Do you want some more ice? Do you want to go back to sleep? Do you need any pain medication?" she asked, as if she couldn't stop the questions from pouring out of her mouth.

"No, no…" he paused before replying, "I do feel like I could sleep some more, though. It's so hard to keep my eyes open."

"That's okay, Dad, just take a nap. Get some good rest, okay?" she instructed him. She watched as her father forced his eyelids open once more and she could see the love in his face when he smiled at her. His eyes then sought out his husband; the man who had been by his side for so many years.

"Will you stay?" he asked, each word was clearly an effort.

"Of course I'll stay," her father replied. "Scootch over." As she watched her fathers' settle in next to each other on the tiny bed she was overwhelmed by the love the two of them shared. Again, she felt as if she were intruding on a private moment.

"I love you, Dad, Daddy," she whispered, planting light kisses on each of their foreheads. "Have a good nap. I'll be back later," she promised.

She had begun to walk towards the door when she heard her daddy mumble, "Bring Noah with you the next time you come." Her footsteps faltered, and she turned to look back at the bed.

"Noah had to go back to New York, Daddy," she said, the lie tasting bitter on her tongue. "But Dad, he said to tell you that he hopes you get better soon, and that he's thinking of you." She turned away from them as soon as the words left her mouth so that they couldn't read the lie on her face.

She was just shutting the door when she heard her dad ask, "Rachel and Noah were together?" Sighing, she clicked the door shut and walked to the elevator.

She didn't really have a set place to go, she didn't have anything to do except get rid of the scuff marks on the foyer wall. She drove in silence once again, and when she reached the house it was with relish that she attacked the marks on the walls.

She scrubbed at the walls with a Magic Eraser until her fingers were puckered and her knuckles were bloody from scraping against the wall too many times. She had forced herself to maintain her composure as she had driven through town but here in the silence of her childhood home, she let the tears fall down her face.

She sobbed, she whimpered, she blubbered, she _cried_, and at points, she was unable to say exactly what it was that she was crying for. All of her emotions were welling up inside of her into a mish-mash of confusion, weariness, and frustration, and so she attacked the wall with vigor while she wiped tears from her face. She did not allow herself to cry for Noah Puckerman. She needed to gain balance and perspective in her life, but she couldn't do that it she was constantly aching for him.

Once she had Magic Erasered every phantom smudge from the wall she went upstairs to change out of her (now sweaty and tearstained) clothes and take a shower for the first time in days. She let the hot water beat into her skin, washing away the scent of the hospital, the scent of the airplane, the scent of sex, the scent of Noah Puckerman.

_Stop it_, she scolded herself. Now is not the time to think about him. He's gone; he left, you knew he would. You have bigger things to focus on, Rachel. You need to be here, physically _and_ mentally, so that you can help your fathers. Now is not the time to mourn the departure of the man you love.

It was hard to hold herself to her resolution; she nearly lost control when she spotted the small bruises on her arms from where he'd gripped her to lift her up. When she had been toweling dry, she had spotted a small hickey on swell of her breast and had had to force herself to keep from shouting in frustration.

It should be easier, after all of this time, to just let him go. To let him wander out of her life the same way he had been reinserted into it: abruptly and without warning. But it wasn't easy and it did hurt, and the ache of his leaving her burned in the back of her mind and she fought against it like a child fights against wiggling a loose tooth – haphazardly and inconsistently, but with a conviction that was rooted in right and wrong.

She emerged from her bathroom feeling exhausted and liquid, as if the hot water had helped to beat away some of her pain and stiffness. She crawled into bed, determined to sleep away some of the exhaustion and some of the mental weariness. She rolled over onto her stomach and slipped her hands up underneath her pillows. As she was struggling to get comfortable, her hand brushed against paper.

_What the hell is this?_ she questioned as she pulled a thick envelope out from beneath the pillows. She turned over in the bed and propped herself up on the pillows. She pulled out a few sheets of paper and unfolded them slowly. Her heart began to race as she recognized the handwriting scrawling across the page.

She read through his letter quickly, eyes scanning across the lines as if searching for hidden messages in his words. When she had finished reading the letter she got out of the bed and plugged in her iPod. As she snuggled back under the sheets, the beginning chords of "Moonlight Mile" began to whisper through the room.

As the music played she read his letter over and over again, absorbing everything he had written to her – every nuance, every word. Each time she reached his closing words she felt tears begin to prick at her eyes, and she forced herself to start over again, keeping the tears at bay.

She knew he was right; she needed to figure herself out before she could ever ask Noah to be with her again. She needed to stop trying to make excuses for the way she had behaved, and just accept responsibility for herself. She needed to take care of her father, and try to get a firm grasp on what was going on in her life – she didn't want to bring Noah into any drama. She knew that if they got back together right now, they would always wonder if it was her father's heart attack that forced them back together, or if it was because they were meant to be together.

But she missed him – it always seemed as if it were easier to figure things out with him by her side – even if he didn't contribute to the conversation, his mere presence had always helped her to see things rationally and help her to see a way through the problems. Now that he was gone, she felt restless, as if a part of her had gone missing, and she had no idea where to find it.

Except…except that if he had left the rental car behind, and he was in Lima, there would have been only one place that he would go. He would go home. _Of course! _she thought, excitement igniting in her veins. She would go over there and ask him to just talk through some things with her, just so that she could see in his eyes that he might still love her. If she could just see the truth in his eyes, she would be able to get through however long she needed to heal herself. If she knew he was waiting for her, she could wait to examine their relationship. She just needed to see it.

Entirely forgetting about her nap, she got out of the bed and threw on a hippie skirt and a plain cranberry colored shirt. She forced herself not to rush, not to hurry, to be safe when she drove. She finally pulled to a stop in front of the Puckerman home; a place she had not visited in over four years.

Her insides clenched with anticipation at the idea of seeing Noah's mother and sister for the first time since graduation. She hadn't spoken to them again after that night – rightly, they had supported Noah when she left town. She was sure that neither of them would welcome her presence into their lives, but what she felt for Noah was too strong to ignore.

After giving herself a pep talk, she gathered her courage and got out of the car. As she shut the car door she stared up at the house, trying to see whether there were any lights on in his old bedroom. She turned her face away from his window, unable to determine anything.

She walked up the front walk with nervous anticipation. As she mounted the steps to the front porch, she heard someone pointedly clear their throat. Her head whipped to the left and she fought back a groan of frustration.

"Hey, Berry," a cold voice called. "My brother said you might be by."

There on the front porch sat Noah's younger sister, older, taller, wiser – and it was fairly obvious that she had inherited the Puckerman family attitude.

Rachel sighed, and braced herself for impact. "Hey," she began.


	14. Pretty Pretty Such a Pretty Pretty Girl

**AN: So sorry this one took so long - it was a long write, with lots of different versions and rewrites. Because of this chapter, I had to change the whole flow of the rest of the story (this is why you might not want to rigidly plan things out in advance - characters and perceptions and plot points change) which is a total bitch to do. I hope it works well, and that it was worth the wait. Many thanks to my bestie and to saradelovely for their infinite wisdom and patience. **

**Disclaimer: Ryan Murphy owns this awesomeness, not me.**

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The song was stuck in his brain – no matter where he went, no matter what other music and noises he heard, he couldn't get the song out of his head. It was as if it were stuck on a repeat loop in his brain, ceaseless and unending. There wasn't a beginning or a definable end, it simply kept moving, kept looping. From the moment he had locked the Berry's front door behind him, his brain had been playing that same damn song over and over again.

Perhaps it wasn't wise to choose a song you liked with which to write an emotionally gut-wrenching confession letter of love; especially when you knew there was no good end to the situation. Perhaps is, in fact, a bitch. But even if hindsight is 20/20, the situation was still behind him, and there was nothing he could do to change it, or to get the song out of his head.

He had mistakenly assumed that without Rachel in his life, the music would stop. He had requested that the cabbie turn off the radio; his voice rising in volume until he sounded almost frantic as he demanded that the music be turned _off_, now _please_. He had stumbled up his front porch steps and banged on the door until his sister had answered; her face a mask of bewilderment and surprise. He had burst into the house and headed straight towards the electronics, turning off TV's and radios throughout the house until there wasn't a sound left to disturb his silence.

His sister had watched him stoically as he had torn through the house; her eyes questioning him while she said nothing out loud. After he had created the silence he craved, he stared at the ceiling in his old bedroom for a long time, until he finally drifted off to sleep.

He dreamt of the song lyrics, imagining himself running down a long stretch of road at night, his passage lit only by the light of the moon. He dreamed that Rachel was waiting for him at the end of the road, but try as he might, he could not reach her. He dreamed that he had crawled back into bed beside her, and woken-up to see her skin glowing in the sunlight. He dreamt a lot of things that were untrue, and when he woke up he was itching to leave Lima behind him. He wanted to put some space between Rachel Berry and himself. At least until they could get their shit straight. After that, he wanted to have as little distance as possible between the two of them. Seriously. As little as _possible_.

But until that happened, he had to get out of town; he had to go back to where he needed to be. He needed to get his school life back together. He needed to put _himself _back together. He was not about to become an alcoholic at age 22, but the past few weeks of grad school hadn't done anything to dispel that rumor. Shit, the past few weeks of grad school hadn't really been grad school – they'd been training for the famous Puckerman drunken descent into loserdom. Fuck if he was going to become a loser like the sperm donor. That was how this had all started, anyway. Trying not to be a loser, trying to man up and be a good dad. Relying on Rachel for support, befriending her, falling in love with her. Loving her so much he had thought he couldn't contain it all. And then… the leaving.

Fuck the leaving. She left; it wasn't time to think about that now. But after she left, he didn't get drunk. He didn't become an alkie and cease to exist. He had _dreams_, he had _goals_; he had _plans_. All the stupid shit that she had been after him to get on top of for the three years they spent together. And now…now that he was in grad school, in New York City, and had brought her (sort of) back into his life, he was going to throw it all away for a bottle of Jack and a case of beer a night?

Nah. Not gonna happen. There was too much at stake. So he needed to get the fuck out of Lima as fast as possible, before he cracked and changed his mind. He just had to explain to his mother and sister why Rachel Berry might come by their house for the first time in four years, which would be one of the most uncomfortable conversations he could imagine.

In the four years of her absence from his life, she had become a taboo subject in his home. His mother would shoot stern glances at his sister whenever she tried to mention Rachel; he would either drop whatever he was holding at the time or watch it crumble in his hands.

He had heard his sister talking to his mother one evening a few months prior when he'd gotten out of school early.

"When is Noah going to forgive her?" she had asked their mother.

"He might not be able to," his mother had said shortly, signaling an end to that line of conversation.

"Then he needs to let go of her," his sister had replied, her voice wiser and sager than her years.

He hadn't been able to forgive her; he hadn't been able to let her go. He had been chasing her for years, chasing her memory, chasing her forgiveness and love and belief in him. The chase had consumed him; it had dominated his every waking moment, and his sister had watched the changes occur within him. She had held her tongue as he had slipped inside a shell that no one could penetrate. She had watched with an arched eyebrow as he became a robot in his own life. She had frowned in frustration as he had packed up his belongings to move to a new city; still chasing Rachel Berry.

She had grown up in his silence, in his roboticism. She had watched as her vibrant older brother Puck had been decimated and dutiful, routined Noah took his place. She was watching him now from the kitchen table as she ate her cereal; her eyes never leaving his face as she slurped milk into her mouth.

"Cut it out, piglet, Mom and I raised you better than that," he told her with a smile, trying to cut past the impending drama with a sharp joke.

"Oh please, whenever you eat ramen you slurp a single noodle out at a time. Don't give me that shit," she concluded, slurping another square of cereal off of the spoon.

"Yeah, yeah, you've gotta do that to make it last longer," he replied. "Otherwise it's gone too fast."

The siblings eyed each other for a moment; a Mexican stand-off of sorts as their gazes hardened across the countertop. Fierce hazel met petulant brown and for a moment, he was reminded of the way Rachel would stare him down, fury burning in her eyes, until she got her way.

He blinked, washing away the tear that had threatened to fall down his cheek. His sister was still staring at him, but instead of looking petulant she looked concerned.

"Are you going back to New York, Noah?" she asked him as she dropped her eyes back down to her cereal bowl.

"You know I am," he said, false confidence ringing in his voice.

"Is this because of Rachel?" she asked him, stumbling slightly over naming her for the first time in years.

"You know that, too," he whispered to her as he turned towards the sink.

"What should I say?" she asked him, already knowing that Rachel would come, that something had happened, that questions would be asked.

"Say whatever you want, punk," he told her, knowing that she had a lot of things she had built up inside of her to say. "Seriously. Whatever you want to say, say it. "

"You can't get mad," she replied, her voice warning him, "You can't get mad if I say something you don't like."

"Punk, I'm pretty sure _everything_ that you say will be something I won't like. But if you've got things to say and an opportunity to say them; say them. You don't know if you'll get another shot, and you've got to get stuff like that off your chest. Don't let it settle there and harden. It becomes too heavy to bear," he advised her.

"Are you going to be okay?" she asked him, and he felt a rush of affection for the teenager. She had witnessed too many epic comings and goings for someone her age. These grand entrances and exits had done much to wizen her and introduce her to harsh realities at a young age. Despite her jaded youth, or perhaps because of it, she loved him fiercely and intensely. There was only one Puck, after all.

"You know that one, for sure," he told her, and went upstairs to shower. He had left Lima a few hours later; his sister had driven him to the airport in his old truck. Stuck to the windshield, just below the rearview mirror, was a tiny Tinkerbell bobbing in the air.

"Seriously?" he had asked her, flicking the figurine with his pointer-finger.

"My truck; my rules," she responded. "Besides, it's been there ever since you gave me the truck a year ago. It's not my fault you don't pay attention."

"Fair enough," he had murmured.

He left the airport and waited for a cab at the curb. New York felt different now that everything had happened with Rachel. The air was heavier, as if it was waiting for something to happen, for a storm to break out. The city tasted different; it tasted dirtier, grittier. The lights were brighter; too bright. They burst like spotlights from windows and streetlamps, scalding his retinas.

The city was too much without her. He felt as if he had given up the dream of her that he had carried for four years, and it was as if it had been that dream that had protected him from _this_ New York. That dream had buoyed him, provided him with a cockiness that had assured him that once he found her, he would be okay and all of his fuck-ups wouldn't matter. Except that he had found her and they did matter and he did need to get his shit together _without her_ and he had been seriously fucking things up for some time.

He needed a plan. The entire cab ride to his apartment he stewed over what to do; how to act. When he got home he pulled out a notebook and began writing page after page of plans, notes, lyrics, and ideas. Scribbled in the margins, doodled onto almost every page, were the words, "I am just living to be lying by your side." Every now and then, as he stewed over a thought, he caught himself idly drawing the sloping curve of her side, the sharp swipe of her shoulder blade. Every so often, the smooth lines of her throat would appear, and the gentle swell of her hips would be inked in beneath a blanket.

He didn't have Rachel with him; he no longer had the dream of Rachel that he had carried around in his heart for so long. For the first time in four years, he had no idea where he was going or what he was doing, but he knew that he was _fixing it_ and it felt good. It felt like he had found a true purpose and goal to strive for, and it wasn't for her, it was for _him_. For the first time ever, he was doing something solely for _himself_ because he had realized that if things didn't work out the way he had dreamed, then he would be shit out of luck in a big city with no future, no money, no education, and no sense of self. In other words, he would be fucked.

He threw himself into remodeling his life – remodeling his mind. He had pushed so many emotions out of the way for so long that they had begun to fester inside of him; poisoning his brain and his body. They had stewed within him, biding their time, waiting for the moment when he would be most vulnerable so that they could force him to crack.

Seeing Rachel; being near her again, had been too much. Just the like the city was too much without her presence, without the dream of her within him, being close to her, being _with_ her was too much for him to handle. He had planned his entire life on one choice, one option; one person. One Rachel. He had pinned every single hope and dream he had into recapturing the person he loved. He hadn't counted on her changing; however.

The person he had been fighting for didn't exist anymore. He couldn't wrap his brain around the idea that Rachel had led a life that was so different from anything he could have imagined for her. From time to time, he would bitterly think that things could have gone the way she had wanted them to go, if only she had stayed, If only she had talked to him instead of leaving. Other times, he would wonder if things would be worse than they were now if she _had_ stayed, if they had spoken.

She had left and she had changed, and she wasn't the Rachel he had carried in his pocket for so long. She wasn't the girl he had fallen in love with. Sure, she was still there, but she had been ravaged by life and the city. She had been dirtied, sullied. She had denigrated herself and her ideals with meaningless sex (he _hated_ thinking of someone else touching her, kissing her, being inside of her, watching her come undone). She had grown bitter; she had lost her idealism. She wasn't a star and she had discovered that sometimes life _wasn't _candy, nor the sun a ball of butter. He didn't know who she was. He felt as if he should know everything about her, but instead he knew almost nothing.

He knew that he had to relearn her, and she would have to relearn him in order for their relationship to work. He also knew that they might learn things about these "new" people that might cause them to remain apart. Everything hinged on chance – on the chance that their love was deeper than high school; that the burning in his heart was because of their _truth_ for each other, not situations and lives and lies.

For weeks, he remained silent, biding his time. He heard from his sister that Rachel had come to look for him; to ask questions. He didn't ask what Rachel had said, she did not tell him how she had replied. Rachel didn't call him; she didn't show up at his apartment unannounced. He had received a postcard from her, the front bearing a picture of the Nederlander, the back containing her loopy scrawl: _I'm not running away this time. I'm here. I believe you. I'll wait for you. _A tiny star was the only signature she left for him.

He had tucked the postcard into the notebook he had taken to carrying with him at all times. Wherever he went – class, rehearsal room, diner, bathroom, _anywhere_; the notebook was with him. A pen was tucked into the pocket of every pair of his pants; more studded their way throughout his apartment and school bag. One was duct taped to his guitar case, in case of emergencies.

The notebook was the same one he had started when he had first returned to New York and began to get his life together. At first, it had been the jumping off point for his plan, the contract to which he constantly referred. It had morphed into a journal of sorts – part planner, part "note" book, part diary, he wrote everything that could be important into it. He made lists of song choices for rehearsals and showcases; he copied down song lyrics over and over again, working out the melodies and fine-tuning adaptations. Sometimes, he wrote down inconsequential thoughts and random quotations. Other times, he found himself writing quick notes to her, or reminders of things to tell her about.

The journal wasn't for her and the plan wasn't for her, none of this was _for her_, but he knew that even if it was, the end result would be the same. He would find his way back to _life_ and sanity, and then he would find out whether or not he and Rachel could make their ways back to each other.

At the end of the semester, he was packing up after class when Professor Wade approached him.

"I'm glad that you decided your education was worth it, Mr. Puckerman," the professor kindly intoned.

'Yes, sir," he had mumbled back. In the weeks since their initial conversation, the professor had shown no interest in him and hadn't acknowledged any effort or improvement he had made. He had known that he was being tested and he had submitted himself willingly to being a participant in this waiting game. He had hoped that he would be able to earn back the professor's respect, and he was now counting the professor's acknowledgment as a sign that he was ready to go through with the next part of his plan.

"Do you feel as if you are adequately prepared for this weekend?" Professor Wade asked, his eyebrows knitting together in concern.

"No musician would feel that way, sir," he stated, holding the professor's eyes. He knew that he was being scrutinized, and he wanted to make sure the professor was aware that he knew.

"Good answer, Mr. Puckerman. I am eager to see what you bring to the table. Until Saturday, then," the professor said, and then left the classroom. Noah followed quickly after him, rushing out of the building and onto the street so that he could begin the trek to his apartment.

He paused at a post office box and pulled an unsealed envelope out of the crease of the notebook. He pulled a sheet of thick paper out of the envelope and reread it as he unfolded it. He scanned it quickly: _We are pleased to invite you…fall semester showcase featuring… Noah Puckerman_. He refolded the paper and sealed it back inside the envelope. He opened the chute of the dropbox and inhaled sharply before dropping the letter inside.

He exhaled slowly; feeling energy flow through him in a fizzing and nervous release. He had taken the first step – now everything was up to her.


	15. Come on Baby, Please, Please, Please

**AN: I hope this chapter works. After the great revision caused by the last chapter, I sort of felt like I had lost my way through this story a little bit. I still needed certain things to happen in order to make everything work, but it's hard to combine three chapters and make it work in one. Let me know what you think! **

**Disclaimer: Fa la la, I own nothing.

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**

For a moment, it seemed as if the night had swallowed her whole. She could see nothing but darkness and could hear nothing but the wind rustling through the trees. Everything else was so still and silent that she could hear the blood rushing through her ears; her heart pounding out _run, run, run_ as if it were instructing her to abandon ship. She was good at running, at leaving when the going got tough and when the awkward moments became too much too bear.

She heard the slats of the porch creak as weight was repositioned and the noise brought her back to her senses; back to the moment at hand. She had not seen Dani Puckerman in four years; their last moments together had been happy ones filled with smiles and laughter. Despite the hand that life had dealt the young girl, she had been a happy child with a wicked personality and the Puckerman charm. At age 10, when Rachel had first met her, she had been bubbly and bouncy and had loved Rachel from the moment she met her.

Over the years, Dani had become a little sister to her, and they had spent hours together talking about boys and music and make-up and social hierarchy and…everything else. Dani had even confessed her concerns about her older brother; trusting Rachel to provide explanations and too keep her secrets. Dani had been as large a part of her life as Noah had been – the three of them had spent a lot of time together running around and making sure that Dani's childhood didn't lack the good, carefree memories that Noah's did.

When Rachel had left Lima, Dani had been 13 years old. They had celebrated her 13th birthday, her first year of teenagerdom, by going to get mani/pedi's and dressing up to be _ladies_ who _lunch_. They had celebrated more later with Dani's friends and family, but Rachel had taken her out for a special afternoon with her older sister. It was something Rachel herself had always wanted to do.

She knew that leaving Dani would be just as hard as leaving Noah. No, she wasn't in love with her but she did _love _her. She was family, and Rachel found it hard to abandon her family, to abandon the young woman who had been left behind too many times. She had written the longest of her good-bye notes to Dani to try to explain what she was doing; to try to justify her fears and insecurities and to dispel any notions that she didn't love him, love her, love them.

The young woman in front of her was not the same girl she had left behind. This Dani was older, wizened by her years in high school; wizened by her years of watching her mother and her brother fall apart because of love. Rachel had known that she would hurt Dani when she left; she had known that she would hurt everyone, but she had tried to make it better for her.

"Hey, Dani," she said, the whisper almost getting lost in the space between them. The girl didn't acknowledge her greeting – whether she had heard it and was ignoring it, or not, Rachel wasn't sure.

"My brother said you'd come by," Dani repeated, and each word felt as if it were a tiny knife slicing away at her veins, bursting blood vessels and inflicting tiny wounds.

"He didn't say why; he didn't even really tell me you'd be coming, he just agreed with me when I asked him. I might not know the real reason, but I know why you're here. Why can't you just leave him alone?" Dani questioned, her voice cold and furious.

Rachel was standing in the same spot on the front porch; she hadn't moved closer to Dani or the door. She remained where she was, processing this. She had known that she would probably run into Dani or Mrs. Puckerman while she was there, but she hadn't planned out what she would say to them. Now that she was being cornered, without Noah to stop his sister, she found herself mute and stupid, her tongue lying thick and heavy in her mouth.

"Wh- what do you mean, leave him alone?" she asked, knowing it was a useless question.

"Don't be dumb, Rachel, it doesn't suit you. We both know you're much smarter than that. You might have left him four years ago, but you never really left him. You tortured him. You've been torturing him for years."

"I didn't want to hurt him," Rachel replied weakly, "I didn't want to hurt anyone."

"Bullshit! If you didn't want to hurt anyone, you wouldn't have done what you did. I don't care what you've told him, but there is no excuse for your actions. No good excuse. You may have managed to convince him that what you did is forgivable, but you won't convince me." The girl's words were forced and clipped, as if she was trying to control her temper.

"What, are you the gatekeeper?" Rachel snapped back, anger leaking into her voice.

"So what if I am? Yes, I am the gatekeeper, because I won't allow you to hurt him again. I won't allow you to damage my family anymore. We had been living in a shell of silence practically my entire life, ever since the sperm donor departed. The silence worked for us; it was what we knew. Mom retreated even further into herself and Noah was the only one to ever break the silence. The quiet was _normal_ for us," she paused.

"And then…then you burst into our lives with your incessant chatter and your music and show tunes and you taught my mother how to laugh again; how to live again. Watching you with Noah taught her how to love again; it showed her that things _don't_ always get fucked up. You gave her hope." Dani's body was vibrating with the intensity of the words that she was trying to hold inside.

"And _me_. Noah had always taken care of me; he was the happy parent, the one who spoke; the one who cared. He tried to make sure that I had a good life, but then you came along and tried to ensure that I had a fun life; that I got to be a kid. I trusted you; I relied on you. I loved you like you were my own sister; like you were already family. I loved you and then you left, too." Dani's anger was dark and furious; Rachel could see the explosion building inside of her.

"You _left_ and destroyed my brother and my family all over again. We returned to the silence, but it was uncomfortable silence now, we were all used to _you_ and your volume. We had lost how to exist at our volume. My mother lost her hope for love and she became a non-person again. My ridiculous, prank-pulling cursing big brother became a robot who hardly ever spoke," Dani shook her head.

"He tried, but trying doesn't always work. It didn't work for him. I've spent the last four years living in your shadow, Rachel, living in the silence you created. I thought it was bad when _he_ left, but it was worse when you did. Because you had given us all hope, Rachel, and to be abandoned not once, but _twice_ makes it so much worse. Because now you know what you're missing out on. You stole my family from me when you left; you stole what remained of my 'happy childhood.' You stole what little happiness there was left in this house, and you left us to wither without you. No amount of apology can ever bring that back. No words, no _letters_," she stressed, "can make up for what you took from us."

"Dani," Rachel started, and started to walk towards the teenager.

"Don't!" the girl shouted. "Don't try to act like you can fix this. Don't try to heal what you've done. You've had time for that; you've had four years to fix this. You can't fix it now. I used to go to sleep at night thinking that you'd come back and everything would go back to normal. I would dream that you had gotten to wherever you were going, and turned around because you couldn't make it without _us_."

"I used to wonder whether or not Noah was ever going to forgive you; whether or not he could forgive you. He carried you around with him wherever he went, always working, always studying, always thinking about the way he was going to win the great Rachel Berry back. He was always moving towards you but he was always angry with you, too," she breathed. "I realized that he couldn't forgive you because you would never come to ask for forgiveness. You can't forgive someone that's not there trying to make it better, trying to apologize. "

"Then I began to wonder whether or not he would ever be able to get over you. He didn't date anyone, he never went out. He was set in his ways and stuck to his plan to find you. Finding you and convincing you he was worthy of your time was the only thing he had left for himself. That plan kept his heart beating; it kept it from shattering every time he would see something that reminded him of you. When he left, I knew he would return here broken; I knew that the Rachel he carried with him wasn't the Rachel he would see. I knew that losing that talisman would crush him and I knew you wouldn't be able to fix it. And I was right, wasn't I?" she paused slightly, as if she knew that Rachel wouldn't answer.

"I don't know what happened or why, when you're both supposed to be in N-Y-C you're both here in Lima, but I know that when my brother started banging on the door in the middle of the night that you had broken him again. He didn't say anything, but he looked destroyed, Rachel. Destroyed. Just like he looked when he came home and gave us two letters and didn't speak for two weeks. I can't handle that again; he can't handle that again. So I'm not asking you, I'm telling you, leave him alone. Don't hurt him anymore than you already have. I can't watch him break one more time. He doesn't have the strength within himself to put himself back together again." Dani raised her head and looked Rachel dead in the eye as she concluded her monologue.

"Just stop, Rachel. Stop hurting him. Stop breaking my family." She rose from her chair and began to walk towards Rachel, towards the door. Rachel felt numb from everything she had heard, but her brain was moving a million miles a minute, trying process everything and take it all in.

"My father had a heart attack," she said; it was the only thing she could think to say. Dani stopped walking and turned around.

"What do you want me to say to that? That I'm sorry? I am sorry. I'm sorry that your father is hurt; I'm sorry that he's sick. Both of your fathers have always been good to me, to Noah. I wish them no harm. I hope he recovers," she responded.

"That's why we're here. That's why Noah came to Lima. He was with me when I found out." Rachel could feel the intensity of Dani's stare as she tried to figure out what to say next.

"He came here with you?" she asked, incredulity in her voice. "You came to Lima together?"

"Yes, and now he's gone. I found him wasted in a bar and took him home to sleep it off. When he woke up we fought, and then I got the phone call and we came here. We went to the hospital together, and then to the park and then he took me home. When I woke up he was gone and that's why I'm here. That's why I came," she finished.

"What do you want me to do, Rachel? I can't let you break him again. I don't know what you were talking about or what happened or why he felt the need to come here. I don't know why he came home in the middle of the night. I don't know why he left you while you were asleep. _What do you want me to say_? I can't provide any rhyme or reason. I cannot apply balm to your wounds. I can't fix the mess you created. What do you want me to do?" Dani's voice cracked, and Rachel knew that she was rapidly approaching her breaking point.

"I know what I did was fucked up. I know that I messed up. I made a mistake; I made a lot of mistakes. I know that there is no excuse, I know there is no way to take it back and fix it and make it better. I'm so sorry for what I did, but you're right, apologies don't work, not this late in the game. " Rachel stared at Noah's sister, willing her to listen.

"I can't fix it, but I waited for your brother for four years. I have loved him every day for four years. And when I saw him in that bar, I had never felt as happy and as devastated in my life. Because as excited as I was to see him, I could see what I had done to him. " Dani was still standing in the middle of the porch, her eyes locked on the ground.

"I hate myself for what I did to him and for what I did to your family. I hate myself for breaking him and for breaking us. I have missed him every day, thought of him every day; wanted him _every day_. So when he says he wants us to fix ourselves individually and then fix _us_, I will fight for that. I can't take back time and change what I did to us, but I can fight for us now. I _will_ fight for us now. It won't be the same, and it might not be with your blessing, but I will fight for us, for all of us. I will put everything I have into this battle, into this war, even if I die in the attempt."

Her words hung in the air for a moment and Rachel watched the effect they had on the girl.

"What if you break him again? How does he know that you won't just leave again?" Dani asked, but Rachel could tell she wasn't only worried about Noah.

"I know that you've seen a lot of people leave you, Dani, but I can promise you that it will be different this time. Because while you've seen a lot of leaving, you've never seen someone come back. And I am back. I am humble, in front of you, hoping we can move forward, knowing that I deserve nothing from you. But I won't just go away. I want this. I need this, I need him in my life. I need him, I do. I need your brother. I can't really exist without him." Rachel concluded, laying it all out on the table.

"We'll see," Dani replied, and then she turned and swiftly went inside. Rachel was dumbstruck by the power of her exit, and only snapped back to reality when she heard the deadbolt slam into the locked position.

She moved through the next few weeks on auto-pilot; she had no plan in place. She brought her father home from the hospital and helped take care of him. She cleaned the house and went grocery shopping; she had her fathers' cars serviced and returned the rental. She spent the days keeping busy with the drivel of day-to-day life. She spent the nights alone pretending to read or looking at audition postings online. She was faking her way through her life while she tried to wrap her brain around everything that had happened. There had been a shift in her life that had spun everything out of control, and she didn't know how to handle it. She realized that she had never healed from what she had done four years ago; that she had allowed herself to just go with the motions, faking it till she made it.

Faking it hadn't helped. Faking it had done nothing to soothe the pain and confusion inside of her. She knew that if she was ever going to have a chance to make things work with Noah (she had long since given up on making things _right_) that she had to deal with what it was that had caused the shift. She had felt so justified when she had driven out of Lima that she hadn't stopped to think about what she was really doing.

She had been running from her problems, and by the time she realized it, it had been too late to turn around and face them head on. Now the problems were still there, but there were more of them and they were larger, uglier; scarier.

"Why did you let me come to Maine?" she asked Quinn one night, her voice weak over the phone line.

"Hello, Quinn, no I haven't spoken to you in a couple of weeks, please let me ask you a random question that won't make any sense," her old friend admonished her.

"Hello, Quinn, I'm about to have a nervous breakdown and I need your help. Please, help me understand. Why did you let me come to Maine four years ago? Why didn't you turn me around and send me back home?" she rephrased.

"Rachel, what's this about?" Quinn asked her, worry evident in her tone.

"I saw Noah. I've seen Noah. I found him, in New York," she paused, expecting Quinn to start screaming, but she was met with silence.

"I found him and he came home with me and we fought and my father had a heart attack and he came home with me to Lima. And then we slept together and I fell asleep after, and he was gone. He left me a letter, Quinn, a letter. Just like I left for him. And he says he knows we can make this work, but that we need to fix ourselves first. And I'm wondering when it was that it all fell apart and why it fell apart and why I'm just now realizing that I never fixed the parts of me that I destroyed when I left. And I'm wondering why I went to Maine and why you allowed me to stay and why I wanted to stay. I need to understand it," she continued.

"Rach, we let you stay because you were in a bad place. We're your friends; we weren't going to turn you away if you needed help or comfort. Finn was all for turning you around and driving you back to Lima himself, but I told him it wouldn't solve anything. You needed to go back on your own, not because we made you go back. If we had forced you to go back, it wouldn't have changed anything. You wouldn't have figured out what you needed to figure out," Quinn replied.

"But I haven't figured it out, Quinn. I haven't. I've spent four years going through the motions, but I haven't been living my own life. That's why I don't have any friends and why I don't have the job I've always dreamed of. I put everything on pause when I left for Maine, and I didn't figure anything out so I never unpaused it. I never unpaused anything. I kept moving, but I never returned to the land of the living. I've been stuck, but I never realized I was stuck," she said, tears beginning to fall down her face.

"Then you are figuring it out. You're just figuring it out a little later than we hoped," Quinn reassured her.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Rachel asked.

"Would you have listened? Would it have made any difference? You needed to fix this yourself, Rachel, you didn't need someone else to fix it for you. You wouldn't let anyone fix it for you. We don't talk about Noah, remember? You never mention him, and if someone mentions his name, you clam up. We're your friends and we'll stand by your side; comfort you and help you pick up the pieces, but we can't fix you. You have to do it yourself."

Rachel could hear the truth in Quinn's words; she knew that she was right. She had to fix what she now knew was broken; what she'd left in pieces for so long.

She said good-bye to her fathers and returned to New York. The city she had always wanted to live in had never felt like home, but she could feel a difference in the air as she walked out of the airport. The city seemed to be welcoming her home.

She started seeing a therapist and began trying to heal herself. She renovated her apartment; changing everything except for the pink room; her room. The austere décor was junked and she began inserting her personality into her living space. Now, when she came home, she felt at home for the first time in years. She went to every audition she could find and sang at every open mike night. She could feel the old Rachel beginning to break through the shell that New York Rachel had created.

She got a job taking tickets at the Nederlander while she attempted to insert herself into theater life. She sent Noah a postcard telling him that she was there, she was waiting. She was following his wishes. She was healing herself so that she could help them heal their relationship. She could only hope that he was doing the same; she hadn't heard from him since he had left her house in Lima. And then, one Friday, she got an invitation in the mail.


	16. I'll Tell Ya

**AN: Epic chapter, be prepared. Also, I have to tell you that I have absolutely no idea what a showcase performance might entail, having not performed since sophomore year of high school (and that was chorus). Please suspend all disbelief and just go with the flow, okay? And be prepared for the second author's note at the bottom with some special instructions. **

**Disclaimer: I own none of the Glee-ness, nor do I have any rights to any of the songs mentioned in this chapter.

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It wasn't one of the main stages; hell, it could hardly be considered a minor stage. But a stage it was, with a thick velvet curtain and bright lights and a crowd of people waiting for the showcase to begin.

His showcase group wasn't a large group; their performance class of 8 had been split in two – one group to perform on Friday, one group to perform on Saturday. They were each allowed four performance pieces and had been granted artistic control of their showcase sets. That meant that the backstage area was swarming with props, makeshift sets, costume carts, stage managers, techies, and makeup artists and vocal students who were getting "experience credit" by performing in the showcase.

Noah was slumped on a sofa in the dressing room trying to appear calm and collected while inside he was _freaking out_. It was his first major showcase, it counted for a large portion of his final grade in his performance class, it was _New York fucking City_, and (cue the rolling stomach and sweaty palms) Rachel might be in the crowd he could hear chattering in the auditorium.

_Fuck off with your crazy, Puckerman_, he thought to himself. _You're a stud. You don't do sweaty palms._ Yeah, sure. Stud. Right. Exactly how much of a stud have you been lately? Oh, yeah? Gotten laid once in the last four years? Oh sure. _Super_ stud.

_Fine, motherfucker, I might not be a stud, but I'm still a badass_ he argued with himself. The other part of him smirked back: _whatever helps you sleep at night, stud._

Frustrated, he ran his hands over his face. Thankfully he didn't have his stage makeup on yet as he was slated to perform third, just after the intermission, which gave him a long time to be planted on the sofa in the dressing room, freaking out.

It wasn't like he hadn't performed before – hello, Nationals winners – but he had never performed before when he had so much to prove. This one performance had a lot riding on it – his future career, his education, Professor Wade's approval, and that was without adding the issue of Rachel to the mix.

He hadn't remodeled his life with her in mind – he had done everything for himself, just as he had "contracted" to do. None of it was for her, none of it was about her, but this performance had a special electric undercurrent running through it.

_It _wasn't for her, but the invitation he had dropped into the mailbox _was_. It was his bat-signal to her, indicating that he felt he was ready to begin the rebuilding process. If she came, then that was awesome and they could begin working on their relationship. If she didn't, then that either meant that she wasn't ready or had discovered that she didn't want to be with him anymore. Again. And to top it all off – he had no idea if she had even gotten the invitation in time, as he had waited until the _last_ possible second to send it to her.

_Dude, seriously, man-up, _he scolded himself. You're doing exactly what you shouldn't be doing. You're making this about her. You're freaking yourself out and acting like a pussy because you're getting all wound up over your relationship with Rachel Berry. Now _grow a pair_ and get over it. If she comes, she comes. Awesome. If she doesn't, you'll survive. It won't be life-ending, -altering, -devastating. It will be what it will be.

_That's pretty Zen, dude_, his inner voice replied, and he smirked as he felt the tension roll from his shoulders. The tightness around his eyes lessened and he felt himself start to breathe normally again. He settled back onto the sofa in a more comfortable position, and promptly fell asleep while waiting for the showcase to begin.

Two hours later, Professor Wade was standing over him shaking him awake.

"Mr. Puckerman, if this is your idea of being "prepared" for a showcase and your plan to impress your professors, I must say, you are failing admirably," the professor intoned as Noah fought to clear the fog from his brain.

"I'm sorry professor – to be honest, I was slightly freaked out, but then I made myself relax…apparently a little too much. Is the first set over?" he asked as he scrambled up off of the sofa.

"Not quite; Mr. McClenny has just started his second piece. I don't know _what_ he was thinking, covering Nelly Furtado. Even if he had managed to create an inspired arrangement, the song choice is completely inappropriate and his voice is a bit…pitchy," Professor Wade said scathingly and Noah got the feeling that John McClenny would not be receiving the A he was hoping for in the performance class, after all.

"As I told you at the end of class, I am eager to see what you will be performing for us this evening. I've seen your extras milling about in costume with their makeup and hair done. Rest assured, I was _very_ surprised by the amount of glitter on some of them," the man said as he quirked an eyebrow at Noah. Noah simply smiled back at the professor, who broke into a smile of his own.

"Aha! Well, we shall see. I suppose I should let you go get yourself ready and return to the program myself. Hopefully, Mr. McClenny has stopped butchering "I'm Like a Bird" and moved on to his next questionable piece. " With that final comment, the professor swept from the room and Noah found himself staring after the man.

_Okay, Puckerman. Professor Wade? He's a badass. Odd as the day is long, but a badass nonetheless. As Kurt would say, he definitely knows how to make an exit. _

His confidence buoyed by the Professor's words and the dismal performance John was giving the audience, Noah moved to the make-up chair closest to the "artist" (read: student) who would be in charge of his appearance.

"You're sure you want to do this one first?" the girl asked him, her pink hair vivid against her pale skin. "It would be a lot easier if we did this one last…it would be a better closer, and it would give you more time!"

"We've already discussed this, Zoe," he reminded her. "The last song has to be the last song. I'm sure it will be fine."

He relaxed back into the makeup chair and let her go to work on his face. Twenty-five minutes later he was shooed away from the chair as Zoe reminded him that she would be waiting next to the stage manager's podium as soon as his first piece was over to prep for the next one.

"And no ridiculous encore bows or anything. We don't have time for that!" she shouted after him as he left the room.

He walked out of the dressing room and was immediately gawked at – his classmates were staring at him as if they had never seen him before; extras who weren't part of his performance were doing double-takes as he walked by. He spent the rest of the intermission reviewing his performance notes with the other musicians, vocalists, and dancers who would be joining him on stage.

After what seemed to be an interminable wait, the lights in the auditorium dimmed, signaling that the audience had five minutes to return to their seats.

"Places!" cried the stage manager, and Noah felt a surge of adrenaline rush through him. He hadn't performed like this since high school; it was his first time ever _performing_ without Rachel, the glee kids, and Mr. Shue. And goddamn if he wasn't sure he was going to abso-fucking-lutely _nail it_.

He got into place behind the center of the stage curtain and nodded silently to the stagehand who brought him the guitar he would be using for his opening number. It wasn't his normal guitar by any means – it wasn't even acoustic – but the familiar feel of the neck of the instrument and the weight of it in his hands made him grin like a schoolboy.

The lights dropped all the way down to pitch-black and he swung the guitar strap over his head and across his body. Silently breaking through the curtain, he took his place at the center of the stage. He could hear the slight rustling of everyone else taking their places across the stage, and he heard the drummer quietly cough behind him, the signal that everything was ready. He took a deep breath, and then began playing the opening licks on his electric guitar.

At his cry of "oh!" the lights came up and the audience gasped. Some snickered, some clapped, but Noah didn't care either way. He had arranged this piece so that he _could_ shock everyone and prove how talented he was as a musician and just how unafraid he was of taking risks.

He was dressed in tight black pants with black Doc Martens and a plain, tight, black t-shirt; his monochrome clothing in complete contrast to his face and hair. His naturally dark hair was spray-painted black and spiked on one side with a very emo-ish flop to the other. A bright silver stripe was spray-painted onto the flop, giving his hair a very "Bride of Frankenstein" look.

His face…. Zoe had done an amazing job. His face was pale, very unnaturally pale, and speckled with glitter. A large orange lightning bolt that was shadowed with electric blue started at the hairline on the left side of his face, and went all the way to the edge of his right jawbone. In other words, aside from the hair, he looked a perfect replica of David Bowie's "Ziggy Stardust."

The guitar intro ended and as the lyrics began, Noah began performing to the crowd. He allowed some of the old-school Puck Puckerman swagger to overtake him and he moved with the music.

"Ooooh yeah, Ziggy played guitar, jamming good with Weird and Gilly, and the spiders from Mars. He played it left hand, but made it too far; became the special man… then we were Ziggy's band…" he sang as the song simmered.

"Ziggy really sang, screwed up eyes and screwed down hairdo, like some cat from Japan, he could lick 'em by smiling, he could leave 'em to hang ; came on so loaded man, well hung and snow white tan" he crooned as the song ramped up.

"So where were the spiders while the fly tried to break our balls?" he smirked as he sang; the Puck in him snickering at the idea of singing "balls" on stage.

"Just the beer light to guide us, so we bitched about his fans and should we crush his sweet hands?" he wailed as he launched into the instrumental break.

"Ziggy played for time, jiving us that we were voodoo, the kids were just crass, he was the nazz, with God given _ass_" he whooped as he strutted around the stage.

"He took it all too far but boy could he play guitar. Making love with his ego Ziggy sucked up into his mind, like a leper messiah, when the kids had killed the man I had to break up the band" he began to wind down.

"Oh yeah, oooooo, Ziggy played guitaarrrrrr." He dragged out the last word as the keyboardist began to play and the drummer beat out a steady beat; immediately launching into the next part of his first performance piece.

"Go crazy … punch a higher floor!" he shouted as the lights of the stage came up and his dancers moved onto the stage. They were made up 80's style, all glitter and glam and he felt his heart burst with pride at his vision for this performance.

"Woo!" he exclaimed and jumped in the air with his guitar, executing a cheerleading move that even Sue Sylvester would be proud of. As soon as he landed, he started to sing:

"If you don't like the world you're living in, take a look around you, at least you got friends. I called my old lady for a friendly word" at this he cocked an eyebrow and shot a trademark Puck grin at the crowd. Some women in the audience giggle-shrieked and he smiled harder.

"She just picked up the phone …dropped it on the floor, "ssss ahh, sss ahh!" is all I heard." As he sang about what he had "heard" his eyes closed and his body mimicked the motions of his dancers, who were grinding against each other.

"I'm not gonna let the elevator bring us down; oh no, let's go! Let's go crazy!

Let's get nuts. Let's look for the purple banana `til they put us in the truck" he crooned and then shouted, "Let's go!"

"All excited, don't know why…maybe it's `cause we're all gonna die. And when we do ("when we do" sang his back-up singers) what's it all for? (What's it all for?) Better live now, before the grim reaper comes knocking on your door" he strung out the last word before launching into the chorus again.

"Tell me baby, are we gonna let the elevator bring us down? Oh no, let's go! Let's go crazy! Let's get nuts. Let's look for the purple banana `til they put us in the truck" he moved with the dancers, some imitating the guitar moves Prince performed in Purple Rain.

"Let's go…. Come on baby, let's get nuts! Yeah…" he sang as he started the guitar solo in the middle of the song.

"Are we gonna let the elevator bring us down? Oh no, let's go! Let's go crazy! Woo! Let's go crazy! Let's go! Let's go!" he ramped up for the finale of the song, letting it all loose while his dancers whirled around the stage.

"Dr. Everything'll-Be-Alright, make everything go wrong. Pills and thrills and daffodils will kill…hang tough children …he's coming .. he's coming .. he's coming!" he shouted, and began the intricate guitar work that finished out the song. When the progression wound down, the dancers stopped dancing and the stage lights focused into an overhead spotlight that beamed directly down on top of his head.

He looked out into the crowd and wailed his final line:

"Ziggy plaaaaaaaaayeeeeeed guitar!"

Silence held over the crowd for a small moment and then people were literally _leaping_ to their feet; cheering and applauding loudly. He received catcalls and loud whistles and he wanted to stay on the stage so badly and bow repeatedly and jump up and down and pump his fist in the air, _but_ he remembered what he had promised Zoe before he had taken the stage.

Quickly, professionally, he bowed once and then moved off the stage to the wings where Zoe was waiting.

"Excellent, excellent, good job, gotta take all of this shit off _fast_" she mumbled as she swiped his face with cream and a cloth. While she was doing that, another makeup artistry student was acting as her assistant, handing Zoe the tools she would need to quickly fix his face.

The first number had been his huge production – he didn't require any more outlandish makeup now that it was over. Zoe and her assistant quickly applied his "fresh" face and then he turned and walked back out onto the stage, electric guitar still strung across his body.

He turned to each of the wings to make sure his male and female dancers were waiting in their places. They were in simple costumes of modern, everyday clothing; their faces fresh and natural. Once he had assessed that everything was ready, he signaled the rest of his "band" and began the next song.

The band began to play and he began to sway with the music. At his cue of "Oh baby," his male dancer, Brad, and his female dancer, Cathey, moved from their positions in the wings. The intro continued to build as they began to dance.

"Dance" was the only thing Noah could think of to describe it. It wasn't a waltz; it wasn't any sort of choreography that he'd ever seen before (and Mike Chang? He can dance _and_ choreograph). They were modern dance students and he had allowed them free reign with their performance, which meant that he had no fucking clue what they were doing, or even if they did the same thing each run-through.

The intro began to wind down and Noah began to sing, "Well, there's a light in your eye that keeps shinin', like a star that can't wait for night. I hate to think I've been blinded, baby. Why can't I see you tonight?"

As he sang, he thought of the importance the song had in the "story arc" that he was attempting to build with his final three songs. He wondered if Rachel was there. He wondered if she would see the story arc he'd built, if she would realize that he had used his life experiences to create art, as she had so often told him to do. He might be borrowing the art from other people, but that didn't mean that it meant any less.

"And the warmth of your smile starts a-burnin', and the thrill of your touch gives me fright and I'm shakin' so much, really yearnin'; why don'cha show up and make it alright, yeah, that's alright…" he sang, preparing for the emotional significance the next few lines held for him.

"And if you promised your love so completely, and you said you would always be true…You swore that you never would leave me, baby. Whatever happened to you?" His mental images flashed painfully through a slideshow of the aftermath of Rachel's leaving.

"And you thought it was only in you, as you wished all your dreams would come true, hey…It ain't the first time, believe me, m-baby I'm standin' here feelin' blue, blue, ha, feelin' blue, now" he continued, expressing very clearly how he had felt when she had left him behind in Lima. This whole song was practically his ode to her leaving and the state she had left him in. It hadn't been his first time being abandoned, but it had been one of the worst.

"Oh, babe, now, I will stand in the rain on the corner, I'll watch the people go shufflin' downtown," he sang/warned the ghost Rachel in his head.

"Another ten minutes, no longer, and then I'm turnin' around, 'round" he admonished the ghost as he described the unspoken threats he had given to her memory. Sure, he would wait… but only for a little while. Seriously. Probably. Not.

"And the clock on the wall's movin' slower, oh, my heart, it sinks to the ground. And the storm that I thought would blow over" (he had thought she would come back to him, he did, he did) clouds the light of the love that I found, found…

Light of the love that I found…Light of the love that I found, oh, that I found" he continued in his song-therapy.

At this point, the song shifted to a Caribbean beat and Cathey and Brad began to dance in a spicy, sensual salsa rhythm.

"Hey, babe, ooh, ooh-ooh-ooh-oooh, hand of the clock, well, it just don't seem to stop when I'm thinking it over," he sang over the calypso rock beat.

"Woo, time is alive and I just don't wanna be fined, gotta get away, get away" he sang as he described the time he'd spent waiting for her to return; the time he had stopped moving forward and had stood still in her absence.

"Whooa, ooh-ooh-ooh-oooh, I see you in my dream," (the Rachel he had carried with him in his pocket), "but I just don't see you with me." And he hadn't. He hadn't been able to see her with him because he was trying to reconcile the old Rachel with the new Noah, completely disregarding the idea that there could be a new Rachel, too.

"I've gotta get home, gotta get home, gotta get home, I've gotta get ohh, home" he repeated. He had to get back to himself. He had to make _his _life work.

The calypso rhythm subsided and returned to the original beat of the song as he began to sing:

"Ooh, now, my body is startin' to quiver, and the palms of my hands gettin' wet, oh…I got no reason to doubt you, baby," (but he _did_ have a reason… the crowd just didn't need to know it).

"It's all a terrible mess. And I'll run in the rain 'till I'm breathless; when I'm breathless, I'll run 'till I drop, hey…" the song continued, and he agreed with the lyrics. He _had_ run through his life, through college, to New York, to find Rachel. To find out what happened to her.

From this point in the song, his mental story departed from the lyrics (sort of…after all, he had hunted for her in all the wrong bars), and he continued to sing, "The thoughts of a fool's kinda careless, I'm just a fool waitin' on the wrong block, oh-whoa, yeah…Hey, now, ohhh-whoa-hoh-hoh" his voice carried as the song began to wind down to its conclusion.

"Light of the love that I found, light of the love that I found, light of the love that I, light of the love that I found. Light of the, hey, now, light of the, hey, now

Light of the love that I found, light of the love that I found" he repeated until the song concluded.

Cathey and Brad stood breathless on opposite sides of the stage, their chests heaving as they grinned with satisfaction. They exited the stage and left Noah standing alone.

A stagehand brought him a stool and an acoustic guitar; the same guitar on which he had once played "Sweet Caroline" for a girl who wouldn't let him touch her boobs. He settled onto the stool and positioned the guitar on his lap, waiting for the applause to die down.

When the room had quieted, he took a deep breath and began his next piece. The song continued the story arc he had built, and he felt that it would be better to strip it down and lay it bare; just the way it had been; just the way it had felt. So it was just him and his guitar alone on the stage – no back-up singers, no dancers, no band.

The haunting first notes of the song rang out through the quiet auditorium and a reverent hush fell over the crowd. They are waiting to see what he, Noah Puckerman, will give them next. (A heady thought, indeed.)

And so he sang, no props, no theater lights, no stage magic. He gave them himself, raw and bare. He gave them everything that he had intended to give to Rachel when he had written her the letter. He sang it, now, instead:

"When the wind blows and the rain feels cold, with a head full of snow…with a head full of snow. In the window there's a face you know; don't the night pass slow… Don't the nights pass slow?"

His voice was strong and sure; clear as it rang out over the chord progressions.

"The sound of strangers sending nothing to my mind; just another mad mad day on the road," he sang forcefully, and allowed his emotions to pour out into the next line; the line he had copied and recopied; traced into every curve of Rachel's hip; etched into every corner of his notebook.

"I am just living to be lying by your side," he released, his eyes shut tight as he allowed himself to briefly remember the sight of her in body in the moonlight that night.

"But I'm just about a moonlight mile on down the road," he continued as his eyes snapped open. He strummed the guitar softly, building to the next stanza. This song had been in his brain, in his heart; in his blood from the moment he had left her house. It was immensely gratifying and yet terribly painful to release it into the world after he had contained it within him for so long.

"Made a rag pile of my shiny clothes, gonna warm my bones; gonna warm my bones. I got silence on my radio…let the air waves flow. Let the air waves flow," his voice commanded, strong and rough with emotion as his guitar built to the next stanza.

"Oh I'm sleeping under strange strange skies, just another mad, mad day on the road. My dreams is fading down the railway line; I'm just about a moonlight mile on down the road," he continued to sing; closing his eyes once more.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm hiding sister and I'm dreaming; I'm riding down your moonlight mile. I'm hiding baby and I'm dreaming I'm riding down your moonlight mile; I'm riding down your moonlight mile." The lyrics built inside of him as the song built up. His guitar strums became heavier, more important.

"Let it go now, come on up babe, yeah, let it go now, yeah, flow now baby, yeah move on now yeah, " he sang urgently, the song exploding with exigency.

Off-stage, behind the curtain, a percussionist was set-up with a timpani, a wind chime, a cymbal, and a keyboard. As the next stanza began, the percussionist began to introduce the timpani and the cymbal. Their notes collided with the sound of Noah's guitar and the energy and need in his performance was tangible in the air.

"Yeah, I'm coming home!" he sang, building into a frenzy; the timpani sounding, the cymbals crashing, and his faithful guitar creating a feeling of tension that flowed through the room.

The percussionist accompanied him further; their instruments blending together and the song exploded out of him:

"'Cause, I'm just about a moonlight mile on down the road!"

At this, the percussion ceased and the spotlight over his head dimmed so that he was sitting in shadow as he mournfully sang the last two lines of the song:

"Down the road, down the road…Yeah, yeah, hey hey hey baby, now" he concluded, his voice barely a whisper on the last word. His guitar played out the final chords as the wind chimes glittered and tinkled lightly through the air; then the spotlight went completely dark.

In the temporary darkness, Noah brushed the tears that had fallen during his performance off of his face. The song was an emotionally powerful one _without_ having a life-defining moment attached to it, and performing it and releasing all of those emotions out into the world had left him feeling wrung-out and drained. He needed to pull it together so that he could finish out this story arc; say what he'd come here to say.

The lights on the stage went back up, but Noah remained seated on the stool. A stagehand wheeled a grand piano out onto the stage and Sarah, a pianist from his performance class, settled onto the bench behind it. She quirked her eyebrow at him and he smiled back; the signal that they were ready to begin.

Sarah began to play, her fingers flowing effortlessly over the cold ivory of the keys. She played a longer introduction than the one normally performed for this song; they had worked out a slightly different arrangement for the song to make it a little less country. There would be no fiddle; it would only be Sarah's piano and Noah and his guitar. There would be no twang evident in his voice - the song needed to be simple, pure, and real. He didn't want to hide his message behind swelling strings and crashing cymbals.

As Sarah wound through the introduction, he began to finger pick his guitar, melding the notes with the sounds of the piano. _Now or never, Puckerman_, he told himself, and began to sing.

"I set out on a narrow way, many years ago; hoping I would find true love along the broken road, "he sang, beginning to lay his heart bare to the audience; to the one person he hoped was listening. As he sang, a montage of his life with and without Rachel played on a screen in his mind.

"But I got lost a time or two; wiped my brow and kept pushing through" he sang as he saw himself seducing cougars and grinding with Santana in Chastity Club. Next was Quinn's stony face as she told him that he was a Lima Loser, plain and simple.

"I couldn't see how every sign pointed straight to you," brought visions of Rachel to his mental screen: holding him as he cried in the glee room, opening the door to her basement as he snuck into her house; watching her fall asleep after Finn had attacked him on her lawn.

"Every long lost dream led me to where you are," began the chorus and he was bombarded by images of his first big fight with her; their second "first" kiss, and the way she looked in her hospital bed, broken and frightened, even in sleep.

"Others who broke my heart, they were like northern stars," he sang, as Quinn once again appeared on the screen. Next, he saw the aftermath of Leah's death; the desolate hole he had fallen into.

"Pointing me on my way into your loving arms," he continued as he watched Rachel bring him his homework and sing her heartbreak to him in the glee room. As he began the next line, he realized that in a twisted way that it was true. He life _had_ been blessed at that dark moment –he might not have ever pulled himself back together again without her to support him.

"This much I know is true: that God blessed the broken road that led me straight to you; yes He did," continued the chorus of the song. His fingers moved effortlessly across the frets of his guitar as Sarah continued the melody on the piano.

"I think about the years I spent, just passing through. I'd like to have the time I lost, and give it back to you. But you just smile and take my hand…You've been there, you understand," began the next verse.

It was all true – he had been thinking recently of the time he had simply just passed through his life without living it, waiting to reconnect with Rachel. And he knew that she must feel the same way – she must understand what it meant to simply go through the motions of life, pretending you're okay while inside your heart is repeatedly breaking and your mind is screaming at you to either give up or move on.

"It's all part of a grander plan that is coming true, " (he hoped), as he launched into the chorus once more.

"Every long lost dream led me to where you are. Others who broke my heart, they were like northern stars. Pointing me on my way into your loving arms. This much I know is true: that God blessed the broken road that led me straight to you."

As he began the final stanza of the song, he poured everything he had left to give into the lyrics; the emotions flowing through his fingers and into the sound that filled the auditorium.

"But now I'm just rolling home into my lover's arms. This much I know is true: that God blessed the broken road that led me straight to you. That God blessed the broken road that led me straight to you…"

His voice carried the last note over the final chords of the piano, the final strum of his guitar. After his voice had faded into silence, the lights in the auditorium came up, and he saw Professor Wade standing in the front row; beaming. Noah bowed one final time and left the stage.

It was over; it was done. He had worked for weeks on this performance, making sure that every last detail was perfect. He had chosen his songs with great care; his supporting artists had helped him to create something that truly meant something to him.

He had lain everything he had on the table, both good and bad. Whether or not it earned his professor's respect; whether or not Rachel had seen the performance…it didn't matter as much now. He felt light, as if a burden he didn't know he had been carrying had been removed from his shoulders. His story arc was complete; now he could only wait and see what happened next.

Behind the curtain, his supporting artists and fellow classmates applauded him enthusiastically, congratulating him on a job well done. Others were rushing around, preparing for the final set of the evening, and John McClenny was slumped motionless in the corner, his face turned away from the rest of the group.

"Mr. Puckerman," he heard from behind him, and he turned to face the professor head on.

"That was a rather inspired performance. I truly appreciated the fact that you used what could be an amazing closing piece as an invigorating opener. The rest of your song selections seemed to tell a story of some sort, and I was intrigued as to what that story might be. Perhaps someday you might enlighten me," the man prodded. Seeing that Noah was not going to respond, he continued.

"Technically, you nailed every note. Your choreography fit each piece, and I appreciated the costumes you selected and the musical accompaniment you blended with the guitar... all in all, Mr. Puckerman," the professor paused, and Noah waited on tenterhooks for his final judgment.

"You certainly proved that you deserved the scholarship I helped to award you. I hope to see you in more of my classes in the future," Professor Wade concluded, and smiled warmly at Noah.

"Thank-you, sir," Noah replied as many people clapped him on the back and murmured their agreement with the professor's words.

The professor slipped back out to the seats to watch the final performance and the rest of the crew began preparing to go on stage or to go home. As he walked into the dressing room to change, he couldn't help but wonder if anyone _else_ might want to come backstage and critique his performance.

He washed the stage makeup off his face and changed back into his street clothes, feeling his heart sink more and more with every preparation he made to leave.

_She must not have been here_, he thought dejectedly. He tried to buoy himself up, reminding himself that he had sent the invitation at the last minute and that she might not have received it, or been able to get the night off of work on such short notice. _Or she decided she didn't want to see you_, the mocking voice in the back of his mind replied.

Crashing from the high of performing, he swung his guitar case across his back and turned towards the door. There in the doorway, illuminated by the dressing room lights, stood Rachel Berry holding a box of doughnuts.

"I brought doughnuts," he heard her say as he crossed the tiny room. "I figured that they might be nice, you know, something old for something new."

"Something new?" he questioned, unsure of where she was headed.

"Yes, Noah. New. We can't go back to who we were… but we can start this; start something new. All of those potholes and pitfalls in our lives were part of that broken road you just sang about. The one that led me straight to –"

At her words, he could hold himself back no longer. He pressed his mouth to her lips, her cheeks, her eyelids and felt something right itself inside him. _Home_ his brain whispered to him; _this is home_.

"You," he finished for her, and kissed her once more.

* * *

**AN2: So the songs performed in this chapter are "Ziggy Stardust" by David Bowie, "Let's Go Crazy," by Prince, "Fool in the Rain," by Led Zeppelin, "Moonlight Mile," by the Rolling Stones, and finally, "Bless the Broken Road," by Rascal Flatts. For the full experience of this chapter, I suggest making a playlist of these songs and re-reading the chapter with the songs playing as Noah performs them. I think it makes for a fuller experience. Woo! **


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